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From: Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
To: "tuhs@tuhs.org" <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] virtual consoles / Alt-Fx
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 16:12:37 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <78FE1F5F-7408-4BB0-8D2E-62AA00465774@planet.nl> (raw)

Thinking a bit more about terminal multiplexing was a major use case for early X, I recalled using Linux virtual consoles in the late 90’s for this purpose.

According to Wikipedia, virtual consoles originated with Xenix and before that with concurrent CP/M.

Perusing the documentation of those on Bitsavers, I can see that virtual consoles have a prominent mention in the manual for concurrent CP/M (1983), but not those of its forerunners MP/M II and MP/M (1979). I cannot find a mention of virtual consoles in Xenix documentation as late as 1988.

No such thing as a virtual (as distinct from pseudo) tty on 16-bit Unix or early 32-bit, as far as I know; one could argue it does not make much sense with physical terminals. Wikipedia says no such thing existed on SunOS either.

I think virtual consoles where present in Linux from a very early point.

So, as far as I can tell virtual consoles were invented for concurrent CP/M around 1983, made their way to Xenix in the late 80’s and became part of Linux in the early 90’s.

Have I missed other prior art?



             reply	other threads:[~2023-03-13 15:13 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-03-13 15:12 Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS [this message]
2023-03-13 15:24 ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2023-03-13 15:27   ` Clem Cole
2023-03-13 16:17     ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13 15:41   ` Warner Losh
2023-03-13 15:48     ` KenUnix
2023-03-13 15:48     ` Clem Cole
2023-03-13 16:14     ` Dan Cross
2023-03-13 17:26       ` Miod Vallat
2023-03-13 20:35         ` Dan Cross
2023-03-14 16:42   ` Derek Fawcus via TUHS
2023-03-14 22:46     ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2023-03-15  4:26       ` Heinz Lycklama
2023-03-13 15:27 ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-13 15:30 ` Warner Losh
2023-03-14  3:27   ` Rik Schneider
2023-03-13 15:33 ` Ron Natalie
2023-03-13 15:45   ` Heinz Lycklama
2023-03-13 17:04   ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-13 15:49 ` Brad Spencer
2023-03-17  8:14 ` Marc Donner

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