Score:7

Difference between F1 and F2 in Linux Consoles

ar flag

I am using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

I was experimenting with the TTY consoles that are Ctrl+Fn+Alt+F3, F4, F5, and up. I noticed that F1 and F2 both seem to be the graphical desktop. F2 is the one that I usually am in, which is my graphical desktop, but F1 puts me in the login screen, as if there's availability for 2 users to be logged in at once and to keep switching with just F1 and F2. Is this the case, or is there something else I have overlooked? Why is it like that in my system when everyone else seems to say that F1 goes to a TTY console. Also, if it's supposed to be like that, what is the point of 2 graphical desktops when you can just do the "Switch User" option in GNOME?

Score:8
br flag

According to this thread, that is functioning as intended as of gnome 3.0.

The login page runs on it's own x session and once the user authenticates, it creates a new session (thus runs on a new tty) and spawns the user's desktop under the new session.

In other X Destkop Environments, this might not be the case and thus others might still say F1 for desktop and F2 for TTY terminal.

AlexFullinator avatar
ar flag
Thanks! That helped me a lot! I never knew how the login page worked
BobserLuck avatar
br flag
@AlexFullinator of course! Fun bit of trivia, Windows login shares similar functionality. The Windows Login process first spawns as a System account, and then creates a new session for the user once they authenticate. This has lead to all kind of *fun* shananigans spawning processes as System form the Login prompt on Windows in years past.
kbuilds avatar
ve flag
I've been wondering about this. Thanks, dude.
in flag
Note that this is not really tied to _specific_ virtual terminals. Ubuntu (and most other systemd systems) happens to be configured to use VT 1 for the greeter, but there’s not really anything (AFAIK) that forces that to be the case. Plenty of other distros still use VT 7 for this purpose, or some other VT. The unusual part about GNOME here is really just using a separate VT for the user session (AFAIK, it’s the only major DE that does this right now).
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