What are Virtual Terminals?

Virtual Terminals are similar to Terminal that you have been using so far. They are used for executing commands and offering input. The only difference is that you cannot use the mouse with the Virtual Terminals. Therefore, you need to know the keyboard shortcuts.

Virtual Terminals enable a number of users to work on different programs at the same time on the same computer. This is the reason they are one of the most distinguished features of Linux.

Let us learn how to access and utilize them. In this tutorial, you will learn-

What are Virtual Terminals? Starting a Virtual Terminal Navigating through Virtual Terminals Virtual Terminal shortcuts

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Starting a Virtual Terminal

Usually, there are six (default) virtual terminals on a Linux operating system, and you can log into them as different users to conducts different tasks. The steps to launch a Virtual terminal are:

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1

  2. Enter User ID and Password

  3. Now the Virtual Terminal is ready to work on

You can navigate between the 6 virtual terminals using the following command. F1 being the first while F6 being the last virtual terminal. You can work on all of at the same time. To which virtual terminal you are working on, note tty given at the top.

tty is the teletype number which you can also know by typing the command “tty”.

The seventh terminal

The seventh terminal is the one which we have been using so for in Linux tutorials. It can be accessed by pressing the below given key combination.

Virtual Terminal shortcuts

These are some of the shortcuts that you should be aware of while working on virtual terminals.

Summary:

Virtual terminals are CLIs which execute the user commands There are six virtual terminals which can be launched using the shortcut keys They offer multi-user environment, and up to six users can work on them at the same time Unlike terminals, you cannot use mouse with virtual terminals To launch a virtual terminal press Ctrl+Alt+F(1 to 6) on the keyboard Use the same command for navigating through the different terminals To return to the home screen of the Linux system, use Ctrl+Alt+F7 and it would take to you the terminal