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In Ubuntu, pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 brings you to a console login.When you press Ctrl+Alt+F3 it also brings you to a console login. My question is, why use Ctrl+Alt+F1 over Ctrl+Alt+F3 or vice versa, and what are the differences? Why is Ctrl+Alt+F1 always mentioned but never Ctrl+Alt+F3? Thanks for answering my question (if you do)!

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    For the same reason you have a bias against control-alt-f2, f4, f5, and f6 ;)
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 11, 2016 at 16:39
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    some info; superuser.com/questions/449781/… askubuntu.com/questions/481906/what-does-tty-stand-for askubuntu.com/questions/385831/use-of-diffrent-terminals askubuntu.com/questions/377213/why-so-many-virtual-consoles
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 11, 2016 at 16:41
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    You can log in to multiple consoles (six, by default?) and switch between them with the Ctrl-Alt key combinations. An early form of multitasking.
    – user4556274
    Aug 11, 2016 at 16:42
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    Alt-Ctrl-F1,..., Alt-Ctrl-F6 are multiple consoles. Unix/Linux operating systems are multiuser system from the beginning and in the old days this was a way to enable work for more users. Each user was running her own console with monitor and keyboard connected to a mainframe computer. The same way Alt-Ctrl-F7,..., Alt-Ctrl-F12 are 6 possible consoles for XWindows. If you run more than one XWindows you can switch between them. That is rare as usually users run only one XWindows server. I have had a setup with multiple XWindows servers and was able to switch between them in that way.
    – nobody
    Aug 11, 2016 at 17:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Besides the number there is no difference.

There are some examples where more than 1 tty is useful.

  1. tail -f {logfile} will show new entries that are added in the logfile. Where you can use another tty to start, stop a service or do some kind of command line instructions, or do something in mysql.

  2. same goes for analyzing CPU usages on your system: have sar or top/htop run on 1 tty and then use another session to start a browser, a command or service and by switching tty you can check what happens.

And yes you can do that from a terminal in the desktop but not everyone has a desktop ;)

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    But for that we have tmux :)
    – Jo Mo
    Jun 27, 2019 at 6:07

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