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

Tue Dec 20 08:56:11 CET 2011

On Saturday 17 December 2011, Colin Guthrie wrote:
+> Back in the day, text logins were the norm, graphical logins came later.
+> Text logins got ttys 1-7... These days they are pretty much useless for
+> 99.5% of the use cases ...
+
+I'd like to question that.
+You see, machines still have 'init 3' (or did Fedora remove that, too?), there 
+is still people wanting a Linux box (not desktop) not to have X. And that's 
+way more than 0.5% .
+Or, X may be broken sometimes.
+So, standardization of tty1=text makes sense, is not just an old habit. 
+Because, you are *always* expecting to find a working tty console on a Linux 
+box[1], while X only launches a bit later, if it can[2]. Putting the one that 
+works in the default place is more reasonable, see?
+
+Really, why don't you patch the kernel to start at tty7? you could call that 
+"progress", too.
+
+Some things in Linux could improve, but some don't need change. Unix legacy is 
+what makes Linux great[3], IMHO. Part of that legacy (the "old school") is to 
+have failsafe defaults, is to start with a minimal design and then build the 
+extras on top. That's why Unix principles (or "hangovers") have survived so 
+many decades, while other OSs have gone with the wind[4]. 
+
+http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy , last of the "Quotes"
+
+[1] any machine that has a graphics card and a keyboard.
+[2] see nvidia, ati
+[3] back then, software was desinged by engineers. Time has proven that right.
+[4] Win95-98 had no "hangovers". Then, win2k became POSIX again. 
+
+-- 
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+