After you install debian and boot it up you get some nice looking anti-aliased fonts that you use while the system is booting and after you login, you also see a picture of a penguin with beer.

I don't care about the penguin, but I upgraded my kernel to 2.4 and I want to get those fonts back, is it hard to do or is it just a simple configuration file I edit.

Let me know what to do.

Are you talking about the framebuffer console? Usually, when people are talking about anti-aliased fonts, they're making them work within X.

With the framebuffer console, I haven't heard about anti-aliased fonts, but I do know that you can get a nifty 1024x768 resolution console (128x48 characters) by putting "vga=0x318" in /etc/lilo.conf (and rerunning lilo).

I don't think so.

My LiLO config doesn't have anything like that.
I'm on the debian computer now (thank you roaring penguin you saved me) with the nice looking fonts at boot time. Debian woody sets up the configuration and all woody installations by default have what I'm talking about.

On the other debian PC I have, I upgraded the kernel manually, didn't change anything in lilo except where the bzipped image is, and ran /sbin/lilo. After which I booted up and noticed the boot picture was gone (debians is a penguin with a beer, mandrake has one with a penguin in the background) and the fonts were not very pleasant to look at.

Now this PC, of which I need to upgrade the kernel, has me in a dillema. I can either keep these lovely fonts, and I love them because I do a lot of work outside of X, and even when you login these nice dark white fonts stay, or upgrade the kernel and get my usb mouse working. Most likely, I'll just keep this kernel, because god I love these fonts .

When lilo boots, the screen flickers, then it takes me to a set resolution with the image and the fonts I like, it starts off with the ugly fonts like my other machine (of which had these beautiful fonts at one point) and then goes into a different resolution with different fonts.

I have no idea how it's doing this.

Sounds a lot like framebuffer console to me, the little icon at boot is afaik only ever seen in framebuffer mode. If you've manually compiled and installed a new kernel what I'd say is happening is that you've forgotten to enable the framebuffer stuff in the config which is causing you to revert to standard 80x25 text mode but it sounds like you've used a stock Debian kernel image (which I'd assume would come precompiled with the right framebuffer stuff) and that doesn't help. If in fact you have compiled your own kernel, try going back into the config and under 'console drivers' select 'VGA Text Console,' 'Video mode selection' and under Frame-buffer support select 'Support for frame buffer devices' and 'VESA VGA graphics console' (you may need to enable 'Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers' under 'Code maturity level options' before this'll becom available though) before recompiling and reinstalling the kernel.

I just selected VGA console and then put "vga=4" in the lilo configuration file.
This did the trick--I didn't install Frame buffer support, because I didn't want to enable code maturity level options. I'd take a screenshot, but i'm not sure how you take it of consoles.