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140

What does "TTY" stand for?

rated 0 times [ 140] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 301990 / 3 Years ago, fri, july 23, 2021, 1:30:49

On the Wikipedia's article (Computer terminal) under the hard copy terminals section of the article it says this "Early user terminals connected to computers were electromechanical teleprinters or teletypewriters (TeleTYpewriter, TTY)..."

So does TTY stand for teletypewriters? But it doesn't make any sense for me because I have never seen it and have no idea what "tele" means.

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montwim

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2 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago olouredping · Accepted Answer

Early user terminals connected to computers were electromechanical teleprinters or teletypewriters (TeleTYpewriter, TTY), and since then TTY has continued to be used as the name for the text-only console although now this text-only console is a virtual console not a physical console.

There are 6 virtual consoles in Ubuntu accessed by the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+F1 to Ctrl+Alt+F6. You can move away from a virtual console (move the console to the background) by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F7.

In Ubuntu 17.10 the login screen now uses virtual terminal 1. In Ubuntu 17.10 and later press Ctrl+Alt+F3 up to Ctrl+Alt+F6 for accessing a virtual console and press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go back to the desktop environment.

^{Ubuntu 18.04 virtual console}