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paramtn

Member

Registered: 2025-10-26

Posts: 3  

A tale of two laptops

It was the best of laptops, it was the worst of laptops.

I have two laptops, both HP, both 17", both running Devuan 5 MATE. #1 is Ryzen 3 and #2 is Ryzen 7. #1 is a few years old and works as I would expect. #2, however, acts like the device drivers have bugs.

During boot, I see a screen offering to boot Devuan or some other options. #1 works as expected, with the font being readable, maybe 14. #2 displays in a tiny font, maybe 6.

I have installed all of the AMD packages I can find: AMD64-microcode, firmware-amd-graphics, and all the ones offered by "apt update." Are there others?

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 482  

Re: A tale of two laptops

sadly , my only 17 inch has gone away, it had 16:10 screen and was very readable due to LCD screen ,

could use for hours without necessarily getting fatigued/

but with LED screens its different.

even ryzen can cnot come to the rescue, yet.

devuan is great, but the powerbook was too, very good laptop, in many ways.

basically my first laptop got , although it has worst viewing angle, a near perfect screen beside, with a matte 4:3, 1600x1200.

those today are hard to come by<
we get oled and fancy, but those seem flicker like crazy.
not that i dislked the samsung oled phone used for some time, but reading for hours on a flicker screen , i dont know.

ccfl is much softer to the eyes. hopefully we can get  better screen also for laptop< not that old laptop were perfect, far from, but there has been also some serious degreation, in many way.

stultumanto

Member

Registered: 2023-12-12

Posts: 81  

Re: A tale of two laptops

Are you talking about too small text in the grub menu specifically, or just small text in general? Changing the console font size is pretty easy; you can do this with dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. I'm not sure it affects the grub menu, though. You actually got me curious about how to change the grub menu text, because mine is really small as well. A quick search turned up this askubuntu post, which goes into a lot of detail about how to use the GRUB_FONT setting in /etc/default/grub (along with grub-mkfont) to get bigger text in the menu. I may give it a try later if I get some free time.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,331  

Re: A tale of two laptops

I don't think you are missing some packages. One explanation for the different grub display might be a different screen resolution. Have a look at the data sheets or the output from

inxi -Fz

The inxi package may need to be installed.

A way to tweak the grub screen font size is to modify the /etc/default/grub file.

# nano /etc/default/grub

Change the contents to show e.g.:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768 
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

You may modify the screensize further.
Then run:

# update-grub 

fanderal

Member

Registered: 2017-01-14

Posts: 103  

Re: A tale of two laptops

To edit the grub font and size so both laptops are same/similar:

1. Pick a font for your grub menu. DejaVu Sans Mono is in this example.

2. Convert the font to grub2's format using the grub-mkfont command, and set the font size:

# grub-mkfont --output=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 \
--size=24 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

3. In /etc/default/grub, add this GRUB_FONT line with the path to your freshly-converted font:

GRUB_FONT=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2

4. Enter # update-grub

This edit changes the font size in grub and the console to ~14. Adjust the '--size=' in the grub-mkfont cmd as needed. If the font is still pre-edit size after updating grub and you don't want to reboot, enter # setupcon -f in any console. This edit does not use the GRUB_GFXMODE line for resolution (commented).

paramtn

Member

Registered: 2025-10-26

Posts: 3  

Re: A tale of two laptops

@kapqa Actually everything is too small, but I can adjust browser zoom and font sizes to counter it. I would never buy another AMD laptop -- sorry, AMD -- because it appears to not be fully supporting the Linux community with Ryzen 7. New laptops are all plastic junk. I think I will buy another old one.

@rolfie inxi is not installed on either laptop, so I'm not sure that's the problem. I will install it and see what happens.

@fanderal I used your exact lines and rebooted, but the GRUB menu was still tiny. I'll play around with that some more.

Last edited by paramtn (2025-10-27 21:38:38)

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 482  

Re: A tale of two laptops

my main laptop is a used A475 that got of ebay<
must admit that it function very well with linux, but i  need to have windows on it, too, since linux it does not support the trackpad after the notebook looses full power< afterwards need to boot once into windows, to get the trackpad working again, and then can boot into linuxz.

its a small nuisance, when compared to the 16:9 screen, which is just not adequate.

have a newer intel laopop that is better in some ways, but still the prefer the more premium line/thinkpad with the older apu/pro that is really silent.

think there is much progress on laptops with linux, just if you would buy a newer one with the qualcomm chipsets or so you wouild probably have a harder time running linux successfully atm, but that may change soon.

here is a ubuntu/list of certified laptops, but dont know the value of it or how it translates to devuan.

https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops

fanderal

Member

Registered: 2017-01-14

Posts: 103  

Re: A tale of two laptops

@paramtn  Dunno why it didn't work as I've used what I posted. Can't recall the system default but you might check /etc/default/console-setup to see if the FONTSIZE line was changed from default to FONTSIZE="16x32". And that the GRUB_GFXMODE line is commented in /etc/default/grub before invoking # update-grub.

g4sra

Member

Registered: 2018-12-12

Posts: 55  

Re: A tale of two laptops

@fanderal

# update-grub

will do nothing with that hash at the front

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,331  

Re: A tale of two laptops

That hash at the front is there to indicate that this is a command to be used with root priviligues.

g4sra

Member

Registered: 2018-12-12

Posts: 55  

Re: A tale of two laptops

@rolfie
I bet paramtn didnt know that being a newbie to Linux

@fanderal I used your exact lines and rebooted

and I personally use the convention of 'sudo' (instead of '$') to make it obvious.
I use hash for in-between command comments (because that's what they are in bash).

do something...
# have a coffee
do something else
# now you are done

paramtn

Member

Registered: 2025-10-26

Posts: 3  

Re: A tale of two laptops

@g4sra & @rolfie

Ha, ha, I thought # meant that it was a comment, though I knew that the commands had to be executed via su/sudo. I thought it was a strange way to write it. Old programmers and all that.