Terminal

[Self, Glen]

A terminal is the piece of hardware  (keyboard & monitor) where you type
in your commands to the computer and read it's responses.
Famous standard ones were the models VT-52, VT-100, VT-200 etc by DEC, I
was using them up to a few years ago attached to some Alpha systems. As
PCs became prevalent software was written to connect the pc to the
backend computers. The most common protocols were those used by the vt52
and vt100 as they were ubiquitous. The term computer console was another
name for the terminal hardware.
In high quality operating systems (VMS,UNIX,Linux..etc) you can connect
to the computer via a communication port to control the system. Normally
when you connect to a system via an emulator the screen (window) will
look like the one on a console from the 70's.
When you are at the command line in Linux you are in the same mode as
using a terminal and connecting to your box via the RS232 port. Nowdays
single users rarely need to use a terminal as the interface is in the
same box. I really should get rid of the vt100s in my garage.

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Shahzad Chohan
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 10:10 AM
To: For users of Fedora Core releases
Subject: Terminal

Many Thanks for the replies. They were very informative.

Basically I did do a google search during the whole of this morning but
I couldn't find a page that lists all what I wanted to know, and the
other pieces were quite dis jointed from my perspective. All the same
nothing beats getting experienced advice.


I'm still not sure where the terminal sits in terms of linux OS. I
understand a shell executes my commands, so why do I need a terminal,
why not just have a shell. Also why are some terminals called
consoles. What is the difference between the gnome-terminal and say
xterm or the kde version or the xfce version.

Many Thanks for your help
Shahzad

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