Linux Multitasking
 

I have just installed the new Ubuntu 8.04 and I was reading about
linux and it mentioned the key command ctrl-alt-f2 and how it can be used
to kill x11 then restart the PC or any other problem.Then I noticed ctrl-alt-f3 done the same thing.I used this combination all the way to f7 which brought me back to my original desktop.I am wondering if f7 is
called tty7.Then I went to tty4 and logged in and tried to startx and
it said x was already running. Is it possible to use something Like
KDE or Xfce to run under a gui

Thanks in advance:]

The Ctrl+Alt+F keys toggle you in and out of virtual terminals that are always running in the background. To "kill" and restart X you can press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and it will restart X, returning to a login screen. To have multipe GUI sessions going at once you could use Xnest. There's an option in the Ubuntu menu already for it I believe you just have to go into the menu editor and check it so it shows up, it says something like "Open a new login in a nested window" or something like that. If it doesn't work you may need to run "sudo apt-get install xnest" or "sudo apt-get install gdmxnest" at a command line to grab the appropriate software. Anyway, after you get your "nested" window up, assuming you have the other desktop environments installed, you could just click "session" and select the other desktop environment and have that other session running in your nested window. Hope this helps.

To start another X-server, use . That'll start up a completely new display, which'll probably be accessible with ctrl-alt-f8. To switch back to your old one, ctrl-alt-f7.
Hope this helps.

I wouldn't recommend running the same desktop environment for the same user on a second session. For example, if you run two kde sessions as the same user, each session may try to update the same files in ~/.kde/.