Hi all.

I have tried alot and now i simply gave up on this confusion. I really dont get the concept of having 6 ttys in linux. See if i am in Gui mode, and i want to work on shell, i will simply open a new terminal, if i want another, i will open another, and so on. Whats the need of having a complete seperate console at each run level ?

A friendly explanation would be really appreciated. Pls guys really need some help here :-(,

Many people, especially years ago, don't use a GUI.

Dear Sir,

So ? kindly elaborate it, do you mean its useless now-a-days ?

not useless, just less often used i would imagine, but there are still people who use linux without a gui, especialy servers, so having 6 distinct ttys can be usefull

Looks like you do not work in cli much . I work in the console around 90% of times. I edit files and databased and play music in cli. Sometimes I forget linux has a gui . There are ways you can manipulate pictures too using the cli.
The shell of winduhs is IE and the shell of linux is the bash prompt. Well, in your case if you do not want a cli then you can edit /etc/inittab as root (please keep a backup in case something goes wrong) and you can make the computer the way _you_ behave. Do you know that you can even print with the cli? So apart from playing games and watching some movies I do not see any use of the gui.
My two cents .

Dear Sir,

So, pls pardon me if it seems i am insisting, but in case i am using GUI (which i am), does it make 6 ttys useless ?

Dear Silverback,

PLEASE DONT SAY THIS !!!!, I LOVE LOVE CLI. i just go to gui to get used to linux gui or for browsing. I do each and every task in cli. I am learning linux only because i love working on cli.

Hi,

No, using a GUI to log in does not make tty's useless.

One example (happened to me this afternoon): I was playing with Debian Squeeze and did something I shouldn't have which resulted in a black screen (using GUI login) and no way out. I switched to tty2, logged in as root to fix the problem (and used tty3 for opening the appropriate man page for reference).

Life would be hard and frustrating with only 1 tty........

its as useless as a spare tire on a car, most of the time you aren't going to use it but you'd be in big trouble if you needed it and it wasn't there

Oh i c now. Basically i am from windows, thats why such a useful technique went over my head. In windows, if the gui hangs, we have no choice but to restart the system (if ctrl-alt-del is also not responding), but i guess in linux, we might not face that screen of death i guess.

Really useful tool i must say. I am sure, i will find more use to it once i get more experienced.

Really thanks guys

If you are in X, having one or two ttys just in case do not harm. Use mingetty if you want to save some ram and you don't need all the fancyness.

But, really, even if you work in tty all the time, you don't want more than one or two ttys. You should rather learn to use screen or tmux which are way more powerful.

1 members found this post helpful.

On Linux, you can open xterms (these are virtual terminals); the MS equiv is cmd.exe (not IE).
The ttys you are asking about are basically the console. On most serious servers (ie not at home) a GUI is unusual to have installed.
The nearest MS equiv was the DOS shell you had before MS added the Windows GUI.

What might Internet Explorer have to do with this?

@post #5


IME, IE = FF, cmd.exe = bash ....

Well, on most distributions, tty1 is used to run the initialization script which usually finishes by starting an X-server instance on tty7. The tty2 through tty6 are usually reserved for non-gui usage (e.g., remote login), while tty7 through tty10 is often reserved for GUI application. (And do note that, typically, there are 10 ttys defined, not 6.)

For example, I often run KDE on tty7, GNOME on tty8, and XFCE on tty9. That lets me jump between different window managers for different purposes.