[Mageia-dev] ANN: X11 now starts on tty1

Sun Dec 18 11:54:17 CET 2011

'Twas brillig, and Anssi Hannula at 18/12/11 10:32 did gyre and gimble:
+> For the record, attached are three alternative [1] untested
+> proof-of-concept patches that make kernel start on vt7.
+
+Personally I'm not a fan of sticking to vt7. As I said in an earlier
+thread, if the primary use case of the machine is graphical, then why
+start at 7? It's an arbitrary choice that fitted in with other uses when
+it was first introduced, but these days it's pretty backwards when
+considered on it's own. The only reason to preserve it is out of habit
+and I think that this is (generally speaking) the worst possible premise
+to base decisions on. I mean, if we want to let people use fast user
+switching easily they first have to learn first about vt switch command
+ctrl+alt+Fn. Then they have to learn that the first login is on 7 and
+the subsequent ones are on 8 etc. This doesn't make sense...
+
+What *should* happen is that the first one is 1.. the second one is 2 etc.
+
+When I'm in gnome, and I switch to tty2 for the first time, rather than
+getty appearing wouldn't it be better if the gdm prompt appeared for a
+second graphical login?
+
+I'm not suggesting that we ditch text logins completely, but I'm just
+saying that we should try and make things generally smoother if they
+user has already opted for a graphical system.
+
+Switching to e.g. 7 or 8 should maybe default to providing a text login
+and gdm should maybe present a "give me a text login" option in which
+case that X server quits and getty replaces it.
+
+Anything unused should timeout and quit (e.g. a getty on tty2 unused
+should exit and wait and be re-activated as appropriate later.
+
+All these things are possible (maybe not without upstream support, but I
+can ask Ray about the general plans here from a gdm perspective).
+
+
+Just for reference this is how the seat extender USB things work. Little
+thin clients that you plug into USB that give you a keyboard mouse and
+display. When you plug it in for the first time, it registers a new seat
+and then gives you a gdm login prompt. I don't think mutli user should
+be much different from multi-seat in this regard.
+
+> BTW, I know fedora uses vt1 for X, but what about other distros, e.g.
+> Ubuntu/Debian?
+
+I don't think they default to it but plenty people try to change it to
+that according to Google.
+
+
+Col
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+