Thanks, I appreciate it.

On Wednesday 04 August 2004 10:29, D. Joe Anderson wrote:
> 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.

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