I'm not really up to date w.r.t. the newest dev kernels (sticking to 1.2.11
for now, never change a running system :-), but is the console driver
still in the kernel, i.e. not modularized or something?
The idea is, if somebody is only running X11, then the console driver
is of little use for him except for eating memory. Or somebody might even
have a setup without a monitor or a keyboard connected to his Linux box.
The kernel could still print its messages to the screen if required, but
for that you don't need a full vt100 emulation.
Perhaps the console driver could even be moved into user mode?
Would it be conceivable to have multiple windows on the screen, each
running a shell or an editor or its own vt100 emulation (perhaps
with mouse support, colors etc., similar to the text-mode Borland IDE)?
Just my ATS .02,
-Gerhard