Bug 22332

Sorry, misfiled that, it should have class "change-request" instead of
"sw-bug".  Also, the third patch file should say "eleven" instead of
"twelve" (see below).  This is your brain on <strike>drugs</strike>unix.
Gimme a break, it's my second send-pr(1) ever.  =)

--Rick C. Petty,  aka Snoopy                     rick@kiwi-computer.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Senior Software Engineer, KIWI Computer       http://kiwi-computer.com/


--- usr/src/share/man/man4/syscons.4.orig	Thu Oct 26 23:27:40 2000
+++ usr/src/share/man/man4/syscons.4	Thu Oct 26 23:27:51 2000
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
 will recognize them to be active and run
 .Xr login 1 
 to let the user to login to the system.
-By default, only the first eight virtual terminals are activated in
+By default, only the first eleven virtual terminals are activated in
 .Pa /etc/ttys .
 .Pp
 You press the

rick@kiwi-computer.com wrote:

> Most (nearly all??) keyboards with Function keys have F1-F12.  By
> default ttys(5) is setup for F1-F8 as virtual terminals and uses F9
> for X/xdm.  I propose adding the other three as virtual terminals,
> moving X down to F12.  

	In my totally unofficial opinion, having 8 virtual terminals is twice
too many for most people. I can't imagine a user sophisticated enough to
"need" 24 tty's who isn't also smart enough to take the 3.5 seconds to
edit /etc/ttys and HUP init. 

Doug

> 	In my totally unofficial opinion, having 8 virtual terminals is twice
> too many for most people. I can't imagine a user sophisticated enough to
> "need" 24 tty's who isn't also smart enough to take the 3.5 seconds to
> edit /etc/ttys and HUP init. 

In my experience, if it's available, people will use it.  I've setup 12 
vtys for many people, included unsophisticated users who have no clue what
HUP or even a signal is (asside from a traffic light).  In one case a
business running SCO that I enabled 12 screens when they were given three
by default.  Initially they were worried about getting lost with so many
screens, but after talking to them months later, nearly all their (l)users
used all screens.  Plus it saves them time when one screen is waiting for a
job to complete.  These are people who don't even know their system is a
unix and who have never heard of unix.

Lots of people I know & have setup freebsd for also use all 12 screens.
These people barely know how to code much less would dare doing anything as
root.  IMHO, I think if you give them extra stuff users will use them.  If
they get lost or don't use more than 1-4, why give them 8?  We went to a
default of 8 some time ago (forgot which release) and many people were
happy to have more terms by default.  I'm suggesting that unless there's a
very good reason not to give out 12 such as hardware limitations for some
deprecated keyboards, I say give 'em all 12.

One idea I've been toying with is disabling vty0 (alt-F1) so that console
messages end up there & stay there, without the hassle of logins
interrupting important system messages.  But I wasn't gonna make that
suggestion..  I can hear it now:  "My system doesn't give me a Login:
prompt anymore!"

--Rick C. Petty,  aka Snoopy                     rick@kiwi-computer.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Senior Software Engineer, KIWI Computer       http://kiwi-computer.com/

Comment 4 iedowse 2002-08-11 21:38:57 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed


There doesn't seem to have been any interest in changing the default 
number of virtual terminals. It is easy to configure additional 
ones if you want. Remember also that you can run multiple X servers 
on the same machine, so it is useful to have a few VTs spare for 
that.