Some ttys are provided by the kernel on behalf of a hardware device, for example with the input coming from the keyboard and the output going to a text mode screen, or with the input and output transmitted over a serial line. In its most common meaning, terminal is synonymous with tty. In unix terminology, a tty is a particular kind of device file which implements a number of additional commands ( ioctls) beyond read and write. Very early in unix history, electronic keyboards and displays became the norm for terminals. The name “terminal” came from the electronic point of view, and the name “console” from the furniture point of view. Originally, they meant a piece of equipment through which you could interact with a computer: in the early days of unix, that meant a teleprinter-style device resembling a typewriter, sometimes called a teletypewriter, or “tty” in shorthand. terminal = tty = text input/output environmentĬonsole, terminal and tty are closely related.In unix terminology, the short answer is that A terminal is at the end of an electric wire, a shell is the home of a turtle, tty is a strange abbreviation and a console is a kind of cabinet.
