[gentoo-user] Any way to get real text console without killing X capability?

[Walter Dnes]

Back around 2000, we still had CRT monitors, not LCDs.  The cheaper
monitors shimmered badly in GUI mode and were hard on my eyes.  One of
the factors that drove me to linux back then was that, except for web
browsing and spreadsheets, I could do most of my work in a true text
console (and I don't mean an xterm, either).  I love sharp crisp
textmode fonts on a text console.  I used to do email and write code in
text consoles, and {CTRL-ALT-F10} to GUI for browsing (yes, I tweaked my
/etc/inittab to allow 10 consoles).

  Recently, however, video drivers for both Intel and ATI have switched
over to some brain-dead framebuffer mode that renders regular
consolefonts microscopic.  Also the line lengths are ridiculously long.
E.g. on my 1920x1200 LCD monitor, an 8x16 font gives 75 rows of 240
columns each.  On my 14" notebook (1366x768) it's 48 rows of 170 columns
each.  The largest consolefont I can find in /usr/share/consolefonts/ is
sun12x22.  It's large enough to be at least readable, but I don't like
the way the font looks, and it's still too small for my taste, 54 rows
of 160 columns each on the LCD monitor.

  My questions, in decreasing order of preference, are...

Plan a) Is there a way to have a real text console?  I know that I can
have 2 X sessions on tty10 and tty11 with different resolutions, and
colour depths.  Is there a way to set tty1..tty9 to 640x480 *IN TEXT
MODE*, so that lat1-?? fonts would look normal, without killing the
ability to have X run at 1920x1200?

Plan b) Are there extra large versions of lat1-?? fonts (24 pixels wide
for my 24" LED and 17 pixels wide for my notebook) that I can use in
framebuffer mode to emulate the look of real text mode?

Plan c) Are there any font-design and manipulation utilities that will
allow me to modify lat1-?? fonts to generate bigger versions?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>