Linux Fedora 26: How To Modify The TeleTYpe (virtual) Console Terminal Font in 5 Steps (More or Less)
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| Teletype Model 33 ASR Teleprinter, by Arnold Reinhold |
It is rather easy to change the “graphical” terminal font and size from within a graphical environment such as Gnome:
What happens when you want to change the real TeleTYpe console terminals? Yes! The ones you access with Ctrl-Alt-F1…F6 (tty1 - tty6)! OK, maybe not tty1. The system (usually) assigns that one to the graphical environment but anyway…
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| I need glasses… |
Suddenly, it isn’t so obvious how to do it.
So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my version on how to do this rather obscure and mystical process:
Step 1. Verify that the moon is full and that it is a clear night.
Step 2. Verify what font you want to use by visiting:
/usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/
I like the Terminus font family (the ones that begin with “ter-“) but you may pick any other.
If you want to try it out before you buy, run
sudo setfont *insert the font you want to try out here*
without the .psf(u).gz suffix. I.e., for a terminus font size 18, you would use
sudo setfont ter-918n
If you want to revert to defaults, just run
sudo setfont
Have you picked your favorite already? Good. Let’s move on…
Step 3. Modify
/etc/default/grub
with your prefered editor. Note that you might need sudo privileges to do this.
We are looking for the line that says
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet"
Comment it out and add the following line so it looks like this:
# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet vconsole.font= *your favorite font* "
In my case, that last line looks like:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet vconsole.font=ter-918n"
Optional:
For extra geek points, replace rhgb quiet with text.
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="text vconsole.font= *your favorite font* "
This will replace the Fedora logo at boot start with the actual text of what is going on behind the scenes.
Step 4. Update GRUB with
sudo grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Step 5. Go grab a cup of coffee because you finished! You should see your selected font taking over next time you boot the system.
If you want to know a bit more about the story of the teletype (a.k.a. teleprinter), you can head to Wikipedia to know more!
