• Rhaedas@fedia.io
    11·
    7 hours ago

    I immediately thought, no, terminal. But apparently, console is correct depending on what it’s displaying/being used for?

    • Alawami@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      7 hours ago

      All i see is a source engine console in the pic, not really a terminal as in terminal emulator. console is more correct here i think

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      5·
      6 hours ago

      A terminal in the computer sense was originally a screen and keyboard attached to a terminating node on a network. The network didn’t pass through, so it terminated there. This meant the literal, physical hardware. Think old school green- or amber-screen systems attached to a mainframe in the basement somewhere.

      A console was a terminal that was serving some kind of purpose and showing some kind of interface for humans to interact with. Without the interface software, a terminal is not a console. Without the hardware, you wouldn’t have either.

      It’s easy to see how these things became blurred.

      And now it’s worse because we’ve extended the meanings a bit. The program in our fancy GUIs called “Terminal” and which we often just call “a terminal” is actually a terminal emulator.

      And to a lesser extent, so is the thing you can access on many distros by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1. This sometimes gets called “the console” because it’s even more like those old terminal interfaces. Full screen. Text only. Largely monochrome. No GUI.

      And deeper still, a terminal, console, or terminal emulator doesn’t have to mean “a shell” which is another thing entirely. Shells just happen to be one kind of interface that can run there, and is often the default option in a GUI terminal emulator.

      From a console, the default program is generally some flavour of login prompt. And then the system automagically loads whatever is configured as that user’s shell once they log in.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        2·
        6 hours ago

        I’m (un)fortunately old enough to remember the green screen terminals, mainly in the university library to look up books, new tech that would replace the still-existing card catalogs. Good breakdown of the wording. A bit parallel with the save icon, although some software has migrated from that, I noticed LibreOffice has a generic down arrow implying it is being downloaded to something, I guess.

        • aloofPenguin@piefed.worldEnglish
          2·
          5 hours ago

          This might be me being kind of pedantic, but this might actually be adwaita instead of LO. I’ve noticed on RNote (a GTK app that uses adwaita), that the save icon is as you described, whereas on KDE’s breeze and oxygen icon themes (and I’m sure many others), the save icon is still a floppy.

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
            2·
            5 hours ago

            I am indeed using Gnome. I had uninstalled the Snap LO and found the more current version because of some issues, and I want to say maybe the older one did have a floppy and that’s why it stood out. Or it could be theme-related. So many apps now don’t even have an icon, so I can’t say I’ve seen many that have a different icon than the old save version.

        • palordrolap@fedia.io
          1·
          5 hours ago

          Yeah, my university had those, but they also had an interface to it accessible from the more modern systems.

          I also did a work experience placement with a company that had amber-screen terminals when I was still at school (and the year still started with a 1), so I’m no spring chicken either. They were very early in the process of supplanting them with PCs, which is not something they explicitly told me, but looking back, the evidence was all there.

          The “fun” part with those specific terminals was that the admin password for the terminal hardware itself - because they had a rudimentary sort of BIOS on them - was a “fail at the first wrong character” system. With enough tries you could figure it out.

          There wasn’t much you could do from there, at least not that I remember, but one of the terminals I used did end up beeping at a slightly different frequency to all the others.