# Console graphics aesthetics



## GogoFC (Nov 10, 2021)

I want to learn how to set up a nice looking console.

My HP elitebook G3 is giving me some weird problems, so if you could help with any pointers to any keywords or documentation it's appreciated, I do not know how to search this.

This is what happens:
1. When FreeBSD boots normally via EFI entry that was setup after install font and graphics look kind of ugly, font isn't all nice and sharp along the pixels.
2. When I select boot manually from disk go to \efi\freebsd\loader.efi imediatelly the graphics are brighter and the font is beautiful as soon you can see the loader, even the fonts on it are nice looking and sharp, it almost looks like spleen but it could be terminus, pefect.

EFI boot path is the same for both options (\efi\freebsd\loader.efi)

Would this be a machine specific problem?
How can I figure out what drivers or modules are being loaded, also I tried to find what font was being loaded or used in each instance but couldn't figure it out.

After changing fonts via vidfont to galant  and other fonts they all look very ugly, going back to terminus fixes it but it's very large.

After I installed drm-kmod booting via regular EFI boot entry looks very beautiful and the graphics change after module is loaded, the galant font becomes very small and beautiful, but booting from the disk efi entry again still has the larger nice looking font, no change there even after kmod was installed.

vidcontrol -i mode didn't show anything.

I did take photos but it's very hard to notice unless you're looking at the screen and not photo.

I know the console dimensions load differently when loaded via different efi entries, I didn't play with this to see if it would look better, but even if that would make it nicer it still wouldn't explain why the font doesn't become smaller in disk path efi entry after kmod is loaded like it does for the other one.
Nice font:




Not so nice:


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2021)

GogoFC said:


> font isn't all nice and sharp along the pixels.


That's likely caused by the scaling of your monitor. If you have a 1920x1080 monitor and 'stretch' a 1024x768 picture it's going to look ugly.

Some options to play with in /boot/loader.conf:

```
hw.vga.textmode="0"
efi_max_resolution="1920x1080"
kern.vt.fb.default_mode="1920x1080"
```
See loader.conf(5) and vt(4).


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## GogoFC (Nov 11, 2021)

Thanks


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