Friday, August 19, 2011

console vs terminal

The main difference between console and terminal in linux is that console uses the whole screen to enter line-oriented commands in text mode while terminal emulate a console within a window normally created by x window environment. In linux there are six consoles available, each one is accessible with the shortcut keys Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F6.


I can say console is shell without running X. For terminal will be available within running X. More or less both are same in functionality but have some behavioral differences, like terminal is flexible and we can have more than 6 terminal open at same time but require x windows. Using console mean no mouse , no graphics just type command and get output.