Text-Terminal-HOWTO: Terminal Emulation; the Console 9. Terminal Emulation; the Console 9.1 Terminal EmulationSince a PC has a screen and keyboard (as does a terminal) but also has much more computing power, it's easy to use some of this computing power to make the PC computer behave like a text terminal. Software to do this is widely available and comes built-in with recent versions of MS Windows. Most Linux software can only emulate a VT100, VT102, or VT100/ANSI. Since most PC's have color monitors but VT100 and VT102 were designed for a monochrome monitor, the emulations usually adds color capabilities (and a choice of colors). Sometimes the emulation is not 100% perfect but this usually causes few problems.Communication (Dialing) programsAn emulation program is often combined with a modem dialing program (such as Minicom, Seyon, or Kermit) so that one may (for example) dial up public libraries to use their catalogs and indexes, (or even read magazine articles). Seyon is only for use with X-windows and can emulate Tektronix 4014 terminals. Emulators exist under DOS such as telix and procomm work just as well. The terminal emulated is often the old VT100, VT102, or ANSI (like VT100).Emulation under X-WindowsXterm (obsolete ??) may be run under X-Windows which can emulate a VT102, VT220, or Tektronix 4014. There is also an xterm emulation (although there is no real terminal named "xterm"). If you don't need the Tektronix 4014 emulation (a vector graphics terminal; see Graphics Terminals) you may use eterm. Predecessors to eterm are rxvt and xvt. eterm supports pixmaps.For non-Latin alphabets, kterm is for Kanji terminal emulation (or for other non-Latin alphabets) while xcin is for Chinese. There is also 9term emulation. This seems to be more than just an emulator as it has a built-in editor and scroll-bars. It was designed for Plan 9, a Unix-like operating system from AT&T.Real Terminals BetterUnless you are using X-Windows with a large display, a real terminal is often nicer to use than emulating one. It usually costs less, has better resolution for text, and has no disk drives to make annoying noises. Some real terminals can emulate various other models of terminals but it's still a real terminal.9.2 The Linux ConsoleThe console for a PC Linux system is the computer monitor It emulates a terminal of type "Linux". The emulation is flexible and has features which go well beyond those of the vt102 terminal which it was intended to emulate. These include the ability to use custom fonts and easily re-map the keyboard (without patching the source code and recompiling the kernel as is required for the case of a real terminal). These extra features reside in the console driver software and not in the emulation software but the results are like it was part of the emulation.Many commands exist (see Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO) to utilize these added features. Real terminals, which use neither scan codes nor VGA cards, unfortunately can't use most of these features. One may recompile Linux to make a terminal receive the messages which normally go to the console (see Make a Terminal the Console). r