SHARE
Facebook X Pinterest WhatsApp

What is the exact difference between a terminal, a shell, a tty and a console?

Written By
thumbnail
Web Webster
Web Webster
Oct 20, 2011

[ Thanks to Linuxaria for this link.
]

“Console, terminal and tty are closely related. 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. The name “terminal” came from the electronic
point of view, and the name “console” from the furniture point of
view. Very early in unix history, electronic keyboards and displays
became the norm for terminals.

“In unix terminology, a tty is a particular kind of device file
which implements a number of additional commands (ioctls) beyond
read and write. In its most common meaning, terminal is synonymous
with tty. 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. Other ttys,
sometimes called pseudo-ttys, are provided (through a thin kernel
layer) by programs called terminal emulators, such as Xterm
(running in the X Window System), Screen (which provides a layer of
isolation between a program and another terminal), Ssh(which
connects a terminal on one machine with programs on another
machine), Expect (for scripting terminal interactions), etc.”


Complete Story

thumbnail
Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Recommended for you...

Red Hat reveals major enhancements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI
sjvn
Oct 22, 2024
How to Find AWS EC2 Instance Type Over SSH (6 Methods)
Benny Lanco
Sep 23, 2024
Crond: Daemon to Execute Scheduled Commands
Rose Hosting Blog
Sep 20, 2024
A Detailed Introduction to Oracle VirtualBox
Senthil Kumar
Sep 19, 2024
Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.