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On many Linux installations, I have seen that Alt+Ctrl+F[1-6] will bring up a shell "outside" display/window manager, and Ctrl+Alt+F7 (sometimes F6) will back the window manager / GUI. Combinations with the higher F keys (Alt+Ctrl+F[8,9..]) brings up a terminal with just a flashing cursor. Are these virtual terminals too? What processes are running there?

Run5k
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kabZX
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1 Answers1

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A common setup in Linux is to have 6 virtual consoles, accessible by controlaltF1 ... F6, and subsequent F-keys switch to X servers, controlaltF7 to the first X server, controlaltF8 to the 2nd if exists, and so on.

When you get a flashing cursor, that's a virtual terminal without any processes in it. You can configure the number of active virtual consoles (with a login shell) you want to have somewhere under /etc, depending on your system. In Ubuntu, it's in /etc/default/console-setup. Many years ago, on very low-spec laptops I used to do this as an optimization to reduce processes and memory footprint as much as possible.

janos
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