Reasons to preseve X on tty7

[Jim Gettys]

Heh.  I was using xterm and X for my console in 1985, IIRC; it sure beat
line printer consoles....  

I look at Linux VT's and their kernel complexity with a mixture of awe
and stupefaction that so much effort has gone in that direction....  I
guess it is an artifact of how Linux came about; X wasn't available
early on, from what I've read.

What is more, then you make sure X starts early in the boot sequence,
and starts fast, and "just works".
                        - Jim


On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 08:46 -0400, Brian Wheeler wrote:
> Interesting.  Besides making sure that X ends up on tty7, is there any
> reason why we have 6 VTs?  For all the years I've been using linux in a
> personal and professional capacity, I think the most ttys I've had
> active at any given time was _maybe_ 4...otherwise I was doing
> everything in X.
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 08:36 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
> > FWIW: we investigated memory usage of VT's, and it was significant; we
> > reduced the number of VT's available on the OLPC (3 or 4, IIRC), and
> > moved the VT X was on, without any problems.
> > 
> > Of course, our environment is atypical, but that can be said about
> > everyone's environment...
> >                          - Jim
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 08:26 -0400, Brian Wheeler wrote:
> > > I'm going to agree with the -1.  
> > > 
> > > Almost all of the "reasons" from the original email boil down to "we've
> > > always done it this way".  
> > > 
> > > I don't see what the big deal really is.  We'd have this same argument
> > > if someone decided to change the number of getty processes.  I
> > > personally think 6 is too many, but since they don't take up much space,
> > > I don't care that much.
> > > 
> > > On the topic of documentation:  it should be documented in the release
> > > notes and elsewhere.  The only people that are really going to run into
> > > this problem are people troubleshooting, and if they're worth anything
> > > for troubleshooting, they're going to either know its been changed or be
> > > smart enough to try tty2.
> > > 
> > > Brian
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 21:57 +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2008-10-28 at 23:36 -0600, Dax Kelson wrote:
> > > > > I would argue strongly that this change should not be made for the
> > > > > following reasons (in no particular order):
> > > > > 
> > > > > * The default behavior of X on tty7 has been in place since the
> > > > > beginning (almost a decade and a half).
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > -1
> > > > 
> > > > Can one man make a difference? I voted for Kodos.
> > > > 
> > > > Dave.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > -- 
> > Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
> > One Laptop Per Child
> > 
> 
-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child