On my Linux installation, when booting to a non-gui interface, I seem to end up with a 24x80 character screen. There appears to be deprecated mechanism for changing this.
The method I know, based upon a Ubuntu Forums Thread, the command of 'vga=xxx', where xxx is supplied from the following table, can be added to the grub boot line via /etc/default/grub, something like:
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="vga=0x307" GRUB_TERMINAL=console
Run the command 'update-grub' after updating the file.
Here is the table. By using 8 bit colour, rather than 24 bit colour, the screen scroll is much faster.
Colours 640x400 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200 --------+-------------------------------------------------------------- 4 bits | ? ? 0x302 ? ? ? ? 8 bits | 0x300 0x301 0x303 0x305 0x161 0x307 0x31C 15 bits | ? 0x310 0x313 0x316 0x162 0x319 0x31D 16 bits | ? 0x311 0x314 0x317 0x163 0x31A 0x31E 24 bits | ? 0x312 0x315 0x318 ? 0x31B 0x31F 32 bits | ? ? ? ? 0x164 ?
2018/01/26: There have been various comments stating that the vga parameter is deprecated. Debian Grub Transition indicates (the foot note suggests how to bootstrap the process with out the login require):
To set a screen resolution for your console you can do the following log in as root
edit /etc/default/grub uncomment the GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 and change the resolution to something you can use e.g. 1024x768
Add the line
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keepto the file to have the same resolution at the Linux console. You do not edit the 00_header file as some suggest you need to do.
run update-grub
run reboot to confirm that your changes worked!