Why is TERM=vt100 on the console?

[Benny Siegert <bsiegert%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi,

this is something which has baffled me for a while. On an amd64 system
at least, when you log in on a text console, $TERM is set to vt100.
This gives a barely functional terminal with notably no support for
colors. The wsvt25 terminal type corresponds much better to, well, the
wsvt driver, so a simple

export TERM=wsvt25

makes a number of console applications display colors.

Why is this not the default?

-- 
Benny