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  • Are there practical differences between the way the pseudo-terminal and the terminal are implemented to accommodate the connection differences? Commented Dec 28, 2011 at 1:42
  • @rubixibuc I don't understand your question. Different types of terminal receive input from different sources and send output in different ways. There's a common part for things like process group management and signals. Commented Dec 28, 2011 at 18:00
  • I just meant were there any large differences in the way the terminal device communicated with the emulator now that the terminal is software based. Other than being a pseudo-terminal with the master and slave side, what features did adding a pseudo-terminal offer. Commented Dec 28, 2011 at 22:21
  • @Gilles When I type tty into xterm running in GUI, it says /dev/tty6. To clarify, are you saying that bash connects to xterm through a pty, and xterm interacts with the X server to render stuff, which further handles raw I/O(from Kb/Screen) using yet another terminal device, the /device/tty0? What does the tty6 do here? Commented Jan 3, 2018 at 18:12
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    @forumulator “bash connects to xterm through a pty, and xterm interacts with the X server to render stuff, which further handles raw I/O” correct so far. The raw I/O goes through something that is not called a terminal device. You can think of it as a console device — it has a completely different interface from a terminal. How it actually works depends on the kernel and has changed over time. The X server gets pipeline to the hardware, which may allow it to get/set pixels' colors (framebuffer) or more complex commands (hardware acceleration via the GPU). Commented Jan 3, 2018 at 20:43