On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 02:39:51AM -0700, Pete Hogan wrote: > > --- Kleer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But by saying "consoles", is that sort of like being in different work spaces? > So I could load KDE on like F3, then load WindowMaker on F4, then load Gnome > on F5? Then switch back and forth?
> Normally you have six virtual terminals, with X running on the > seventh, so ctrl-alt-F1 through F6 will get you a login > screen. X windows runs on tty7 by default no matter where it's > started from. The cool thing is, this can all be changed. In KNOPPIX, for instance, one only gets 4 virtual terminals with consoles, with X running on a fifth one at F5. You can run multiple instances of X alongside each other, too. For instance, with your default configuration of X running on vt7, you can add a second instance of X (in most cases) by switching to a different virtual terminal (say, Ctrl-Alt-F1) and then issuing: startx -- :1 This should go to the virtual terminal on F8. Also, a minor point: To switch OUT of an instance of X, one normally has to hit the Alt key in addition to Ctrl and the function key to which you want to switch, say, Ctrl-Alt-F1 for vt1. BUT, to switch amongst virtual terminals alone, you only need use the Ctrl key with the function key: Ctrl-F1, Ctrl-F2, etc. On my Debian 3.0r2 system, I can also cycle through the non-X virtual terminals with Alt-<left arrow> and Alt-<right arrow> I manage some shared lab machines in which we've got two or three copies of the window manager configured to run X side by side. This allows two or three different people to keep themselves logged in with all their apps up and running the way they like persistently, and yet still share the machine. This is also a wonderful way to try out a new version of X or of an entire distribution: The current Debian 3.0r2 (aka "woody") stable install I run is my default, but I can run the upcoming "sarge" testing version of Debian in a chroot environment and run X from within it on a separate virtual terminal. This is excellent for testing it out, using the newer versions of applications that are in it if I need them, and so on. There are some signicant caveats to that which I won't go into here as this is long enough already and that takes us off the subject of virtual terminals. Having a whole slew of virtual terminals to roam around in is among the top things I miss, functionally, when working on proprietary OSes. -- Joe
