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Virtual terminals and multiple X sessions

Another name for the console is a virtual terminal (or virtual console). In all there are six. To access each, press Alt+F1 through to Alt+F6. Unless you chose a graphical log-in screen, you begin at the first virtual terminal.

Virtual terminals are great for say issuing commands at one terminal, running Pine (an e-mail client) on another, running Lynx (a text-based Internet browser) on another, and running Vi (a text editor) on a fourth.

$ startx - start X

To begin X, from the console, enter:

startx

From X you can then press Ctrl+Alt+Fn (where n is 1-6) to return to that virtual terminal. Any virtual terminal, X was started from, will become tied-up for the duration of that X session.

From any virtual terminal you can press Alt+F7 to move back into X. (Or Alt+F8 to move back in the second X session, Alt+F9 for the third, and Alt+F10 for the fourth.)

To begin a second X session, enter:

startx -- :1

It's a 1, because startx is short for: startx -- :0

In all you can likely have four X sessions running simultaneously (depending on memory). To begin a third, enter:

startx -- :2

...and for a fourth, enter:

startx -- :3

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