How to switch between text and graphical consoles?

Pressing the key combination <Ctrl><Alt><F1> will switch you to to the first text console at any time. <Ctrl><Alt><F2> will switch you to the second text console, <Ctrl><Alt><F3> to the third text console, etc, up to <Ctrl><Alt><F6>, for the total of 6 text consoles. <Ctrl><Alt><F7> will switch you to the first graphical user interface (GUI) console if one is running. <Ctrl><Alt><F8> to the second GUI console, etc., up to <Ctrl><Alt><F11> for the total of 5 GUI consoles.  The 12th console is either used as the 6th GUI (RedHat 6.1) or a place to which kernel messages are continually displayed (Mandrake 7.0, really cool feature). Typically none or only the first GUI console is running.

<Ctrl><Alt><F1> means: "Press the left <Ctrl> and <Alt> keys and hold them. Now press <F1>. Release <F1>. Release <Ctrl> and <Alt> keys."

Thus, sitting at a Linux computer you can have many consoles opened at the same time, and switch between them using the hot keys as described above. You have to log in on each console to be able to use it--you may log in as the same user (multiple times), or different users. Each login session is quite separate; they should not interfere with each other. The first 6 consoles are text-based, command-line terminals (CLI, "command line interface") and are named tty1, tty2 ... tty6 (historical name, "tty" stands for "teletypewriter").  The subsequent consoles are graphical (GUI).  These are all *local* consoles.

If you are using a network, it is important to be able to distinguish if your program is run locally or remotely. You can connect to a remote Linux computer over a network, have your program run on the remote Linux server and the display sent to your terminal on your "local" console (which can be Linux- or another operating system-based).  One cannot run programs remotely on an MS Windows server, but it is often used with Linux.

The full-screen text consoles are terminals by themselves. Under the GUI consoles, you can create "slave" pseudo-terminals (in a window) on demand--they will be called pts0, pts1, ....

If you are sitting at a text terminal, you can determine the name of your terminal using the following command:

tty

You can close any text terminal by typing "exit" inside it.

The Linux GUI console is quite similar to other GUIs you might have used,  e.g., MS Windows, but there are also numerous important differences. I love multiple "desktops" to stay organized--the default setup in KDE offers 4 desktops (it can be customized to between 1 and 16). I run many programs and never close them, so to stay organized I keep a connectivity application (netscape with all its windows, knode newsreader, and licq) together on Desktop2,  abiword, staroffice and a text editor on Desktop3, games and konqueror with helpfiles on Desktop4, and leave Desktop1 for the more occassional chores.  One can switch between desktops by clicking on the "desktop pager" on the "K-panel" or using <Ctrl><TAB>.  To switch between applications on a same desktop, I may click the application window, or click its icon representation on the "applicaton panel", or use <Alt><TAB> to toggle between the applications. <Ctrl><Esc> will give me a list of the processes currently run on the local machine ("localhost").

How do I setup video card, monitor and mouse for the X-server?

This should be set-up during your Linux initial installation unless you skipped the step. To set it up now, you may try, as root, one of these text-mode configurators (as root):

Xconfigurator
XF86Setup
xconf

Under RedHat, you can also run the command setup (as root) and access Xconfigurator from there.

To setup X-windows under Linux, you may need to know your hardware. You may want to dust your monitor manual to see what max synchronization frequencies (vertical and horizontal) your monitor supports. The message when the computer boots may give you a clue about what type of video card you have and with how much memory. Read the label underneath your mouse to find out about the mouse. Next time you buy a mouse, get a 3-button "Linux-ready" Logitech or similar (Linux makes good use of all three mouse buttons).

When testing the X-server, if the screen goes blank, displays funny lines, or otherwise obviously does not function as designed, kill it fast with <Ctrl><Alt><BkSpace> and re-check your monitor sync frequencies. Running wrong frequencies can be bad for your monitor.

If you really have problems, set up a plain vga (640x480) X server first. You can fine-tune it later, after you get some understanding of how things work on your system.