5.3 Working with X-windows
5.3.1 How to switch between text and graphical
consoles?
5.3.2 How do I setup video card, monitor and
mouse for the X-server?
5.3.3 Can I have a GUI login prompt?
5.3.4 How can I change my default desktop to KDE
(or Gnome or yet another)
5.3.5 Can I have multiple sessions of X running
at the same time?
5.3.6 Can my sister have second GUI login prompt
so she does not have to kill my X-session to start hers?
5.3.7 How to X-window remotely?
5.3.8 How do I install TrueType fonts from my MS
Windows partition?
5.3.9 How do I copy-paste?
5.3.10 How do I Display and Control a Remote
Desktop using VNC
5.3.1 How to switch between text and graphical consoles?
Pressing the key combination <Ctrl><Alt><F1> will switch you to to the first text console at any time. <Ctrl><Alt><F2> will switch you to the second text console, <Ctrl><Alt><F3> to the third text console, etc, up to <Ctrl><Alt><F6>, for the total of 6 text consoles. <Ctrl><Alt><F7> will switch you to the first graphical user interface (GUI) console if one is running. <Ctrl><Alt><F8> to the second GUI console, etc., up to <Ctrl><Alt><F11> for the total of 5 GUI consoles. The 12th console is either used as the 6th GUI (RedHat 6.1) or a place to which kernel messages are continually displayed (Mandrake 7.0, really cool feature). Typically none or only the first GUI console is running.
<Ctrl><Alt><F1> means: "Press the left <Ctrl> and <Alt> keys and hold them. Now press <F1>. Release <F1>. Release <Ctrl> and <Alt> keys."
Thus, sitting at a Linux computer I can have many consoles opened at the same time, and I can switch between them using the hot keys as described above. I have to log in on each console to be able to use it--I may log in as the same user (multiple times), or different users. Each login session is quite separate; they should not interfere with each other (the X sessions sometimes may if you log in as the same user twice). The first 6 consoles are text-based, command-line terminals (CLI, "command line interface") and are named tty1, tty2 ... tty6 (historical name, "tty" stands for "teletypewriter"). The subsequent consoles are graphical (GUI). These are all *local* consoles--my local Linux computer is truly multiuser and multitasking.
You can connect to a Linux computer remotely, over a network. While connected, you can have a program run on the remote Linux server and the display sent to your terminal on your "local" console. This local console can be Linux-based or another operating system-based. One cannot run programs remotely on an MS Windows server, but it is often used with Linux. It is really helpful to be able to distinguish if your program is run locally or remotely.
The full-screen text consoles are terminals by themselves. Under the GUI consoles, you can also create "slave" pseudo-terminals (in a window) on demand--they will be called pts0, pts1, ....
Sitting at a text terminal, you can determine the name of your terminal using the following command:
tty
I can determine the computer on which my current session is located using:
uname -a
The name of the command "uname" is derived from "UNIX name". It shows the operating system name, the server name, the version of the operating system kernel, and the time of the compilation of the kernel.
You can close any text terminal by typing "exit" inside it.
The Linux GUI console is quite similar to other GUIs you might have used, e.g., MS Windows, but there are also numerous important differences. I
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