Console and switching to "graphical mode".....

[ArturasB]

Hi everyone.

I couldn't find a good (or suitable) forum to post my question,
so I decided to ask my question here.

Most of you remember MS DOS v5 and v6. We also had some
nice games and other application that worked in so called
"graphical mode". Switching between those modes was quite
simple - you just start a application, it turns the graphical mode
on and when you quit your app it returns the "text mode" back.

My question is - is that possible under Linux ? I mean, install
some minimal set of GUI libs and run some applications in
"graphical mode" without starting X server....
Why am I asking such question ? Hmmm... Yesterday I finally
installed 1.4rc1_02, no XFree, no Kde yet. In order to check Gentoo's
documentation I was rebooting to Windows and then back to Gentoo.
I know, it looks silly a bit Anyway, I ran one command and
that command changed something in my head :

emerge lynx

I started use it and I liked it. Realy. So I said to myself - I can do lot
of thing without GUI. On the other hand, there are some tasks that
needs gui (or I would feel more comfortable with it). That's why I'm
asking my question....
The whole idea - keep things small, fast and simple.

Thanks for your answers, thoughts, ideas.

Best regards,
Arturas B.

[seb64]

While it's true that there were application that did run in "graphic mode" under DOS, you should remember that the application that ran under Windows (most of the graphical applications even at that time) needed windows.

The same thing is true with Linux, while there are a few application which run directly from the console in graphical mode (using SVGALIB or the framebuffer for example) most graphical applications need an X server to run.

Beside, just like with DOS most of those applications were written years ago and are no longer maintained.

On the other side there are still some people that are actively writting programs for the linux console (like for example the Allegro library that permits people to write games that work under Windows, Xfree and the Linux console just as well).