Arch Linux User Repository

I have applied the proposed "configurable color palette" patch. Now the colors may be specified in the configuration file using numbered parameters color-num=RRGGBB.

color-235=212121
color-247=a6a19b
color-background=235
color-foreground=247

I changed my mind. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fbterm/fbtermrc is now an allowed configuration location along with the old $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fbtermrc. Old location is used only when $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fbterm/ does not exist.

To set a wallpaper in fbterm, you'll need fbv package (framebuffer image viewer). Execute the following instructions right before launching fbterm (works in POSIX-compliant shell like dash):

# hide cursor
echo -ne "\e[?25l"
# display fullscreen-stretched image and quit viewer without screen refreshing
fbv -ciuker "$WALLPAPER_FILE" << EOF
q
EOF
# use current screen state as a wallpaper
export FBTERM_BACKGROUND_IMAGE=1

To enable 256 color mode properly, do export TERM=fbterm-256color AFTER fbterm starts and then attach to a tmux session. If TERM is not linux upon fbterm launch, it will fail. Tmux is needed because fbterm provides escape codes that differ from broadly used codes, so tmux serves as an abstraction layer.

Unlike vanilla fbterm, in this version the configuration file is located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fbtermrc or $HOME/.config/fbtermrc if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset or empty (the original placement is $HOME/.fbtermrc). Also, the configuration file is not forcibly recreated anymore. For default configuration, see /etc/fbterm/fbtermrc.example.

we need 2 more dependencies, automake and pkgconf

Somthing I only noticed today about this package "libx86" I had never heard about before,

pacman -Si libx86

Repository      : extra
Name            : libx86
Version         : 1.1-8
Description     : Provides an lrmi interface that works on x86, am64 and alpha
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/libx86/
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : glibc
Optional Deps   : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 42.07 KiB
Installed Size  : 137.47 KiB
Packager        : Felix Yan <felixonmars@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Tue 07 Jul 2020 06:39:12 PM WEST
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

Today I was cleaning up my system and noticed very very old "libx86..." installed. I removed hwinfo that depended on it,

pacman -Si hwinfo

Name            : hwinfo
Description     : Hardware detection tool from openSUSE
URL             : https://github.com/openSUSE/hwinfo
Depends On      : libx86emu=3.5  perl-xml-parser  perl-xml-writer

Name            : libx86emu
Version         : 3.5-4
Description     : x86 emulation library
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://github.com/wfeldt/libx86emu
Provides        : None
Depends On      : None
Optional Deps   : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None

And then I also removed that very old "libx86" in my system. No reason for why it was installed. No mention of any package requiring it. So I went ahead and removed it. Nobody complained. The pacman didnt say it was required or optional for anyone.

Then I restarted my computer and fbterm could not start at all. Some error about "libx86" cant remember.

So I removed fbterm and reinstalled it again. It compiled and installed ok. But during the compilation there was this message warning message

WARNING: libx86.h doesn't exist! VESA support will be disabled

I found it here,

grep -i vesa.support ./fbterm-1.7/configure

[ "$VESA_WARN" = "yes" ] && { $as_echo "$as_me:${as_lineno-$LINENO}: WARNING: libx86.h doesn't exist! VESA support will be disabled!" >&5
$as_echo "$as_me: WARNING: libx86.h doesn't exist! VESA support will be disabled!" >&2;} || exit 0

I didnt know exactly what this "VESA support" implies. And I started fbterm and everything seemed to work perfectly.

Only then later did I noticed that the background image was not working. So I removed fbterm again. Then first installed "libx86". And then fbterm again.

$ pacman -F libx86.h

extra/libx86 1.1-8
    usr/include/libx86.h

And voila. The background image is back again. I guess that is what "VESA support" means. Fbterm is working exactly as before.

Name                          : fbterm
Depends On                    : freetype2  fontconfig  ncurses
Optional Deps                 : None
Make Deps                     : autoconf  patch
Check Deps                    : None

So conclusion. I guess "libx86" should be in the "Depends On" of fbterm. Or at least the "Optional Deps" and with a message/warning for the user, that it is necessary for background images.

ello again... dunno where else to report this but it seems like some nerd font icons are not working as intended in fbterm. shadow noticed this by using the neovim plugin for devicons and running the test command. the following icons don't work:

󰡨  compose.yaml                DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  docker-compose.yml          DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  docker-compose.yaml         DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  containerfile               DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  .dockerignore               DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  dockerfile                  DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6
󰡨  compose.yml                 DevIconDockerfile               ctermfg=68 guifg=#458ee6

when starting mpv in fbterm the cursor/mouse does not appear...

actually it seems the cursor/mouse does not work in regular fbterm either...

do shadow have to install some package or launch something specific for cursor/mouse support??

kinda need it for selecting text for copy and paste

Copy /etc/fbterm/fbtermrc.example as $HOME/.config/fbterm/fbtermrc and edit it. This should work because fbconfig.patch is applied, otherwise I don't know what's happening.

Hello, ivanp7, I installed fbterm and did all the steps necessary but I'm unable to configure it, there is no fbtermrc file generated and even the rc file I created myself on the home directory,has no effect on changing the font colour, size, etc. The only thing I'm able to change is the wallpaper. But that is due to fbv. I don't know if this the right place for posting issues, or what info I should provide but I hope you can help me, many thanks for creating this package.

I automated thx1138's solution. (For someone building with yay, just do yay --editmenu -S fbterm and apply this solution.)

@L41 add:

sed -i -e 's#SUBDIRS = .*#SUBDIRS = src im doc#g' Makefile

It is the tic command, for some weird reason it writes to both $TERMINFO and /usr/share/terminfo. I couldn't figure out why and how to prevent this behavior, so went with the straightforward way (it worked for me the last time I checked). If you guys find a solution, I'll update the PKGBUILD.