olli@
Developer
This thread is a few years old, so it might be worth posting a small update …
Nowadays, almost all new PC hardware uses EFI BIOS that supports graphics mode. VGA text modes are a thing of the past. This is especially true for machines that run on CPUs with integrated GPU. These machines always boot in framebuffer mode (graphics mode). There is no such thing as text mode anymore.
If you’re curious, escape to the loader prompt in the boot menu (I think it’s key “4”) and enter the command
To force a specific mode, insert a line like this into your /boot/loader.conf:
For very high resolutionss, such as UHD/4k, you might also want to select a bigger font for the console, see vidfont(1) and vidcontrol(1) and the appropriate entries for /etc/rc.conf. A few fonts are preinstalled, but it’s also possible to convert arbitrary X11 fonts (should be monospaced) so they can be used with FreeBSD’s vt console. Note that the old „syscons“ (sc) console driver is obsolete and doesn’t work well with EFI, and it also has other shortcomings; you should always use the new vt driver.
Nowadays, almost all new PC hardware uses EFI BIOS that supports graphics mode. VGA text modes are a thing of the past. This is especially true for machines that run on CPUs with integrated GPU. These machines always boot in framebuffer mode (graphics mode). There is no such thing as text mode anymore.
If you’re curious, escape to the loader prompt in the boot menu (I think it’s key “4”) and enter the command
gop list. You’ll get a list of graphics modes supported by your GPU + monitor (for this to work correctly, the monitor must be switched on during the EFI POST process). Usually, mode 0 is the native resolution of your monitor, like 1920×1080, and mode 1 is the default resolution that is more conservative, like 800×600.To force a specific mode, insert a line like this into your /boot/loader.conf:
Code:
exec="gop set 0"