Once upon a time, Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxx> said: > Because it was the number of getty tasks someone had in the example inittab > for SysVInit I suspect. It is useful to have a couple even for debug hiding > where you can direct a user but the number is arbitary and the fact X happens > to be VT7 is just a further arbitary fallout from this. I think 6 gettys goes back before SysVInit, maybe to SLS. I used to boot in level 3, log in on tty1, and run startx to get X, but I stopped doing that years ago. However, from that time, on the rare occasions I need a text console while in X, I switch to tty2, not tty1. On my servers with serial consoles, I typically disable most of the console gettys anyway. Didn't somebody have an on-demand console daemon for Linux at some point? You'd just run it, and when someone switched to a new VT where nothing was running, it would start a getty. I always thought that would be much better than an arbitrary 6. I don't see this as a big deal. I've been using X since before Linux existed, and I just see non-X ttys (on a system running X) as an extra thing (none of the other systems I've used X on support that; the console is either text or X, not both). The argument appears to be coming from a (very!) vocal minority (what percentage of Fedora users are on this list, and what percentage of list members are objecting?). The vast majority of users have no idea or care about VT switching in my experience and will not care that X switched from one tty to another (if you tried to explain it to them, you'd just get blank stares). If it speeds up the boot process and causes less flicker and monitor reset (which does disconcert regular users), they'll be happy. As for the argument that speeding up boot and making the boot smoother is meaningless because you should never need to reboot, there are still a lot of users that have to dual-boot. Speeding up boot (and shutdown!) is a good thing for them. A better solution to this issue of "where is my X or text tty" would be to allow console managers to register for a different set of keystrokes; e.g. gettys could register for [CTRL-]ALT-F<1,2,...> and X for [CTRL-]ALT-<1,2,...> (or something like that). The first getty to register would get F1 and the first X to register would get 1. -- Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
