Terminals
Most Linux systems that include a desktop interface start multiple virtual terminals running on the computer. Virtual terminals are a way to have multiple shell sessions open at once outside of the graphical interface you are using.
You can switch between virtual terminals much the same way that you would switch between workspaces on a GUI. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2, F3, F4, and so on up to F6 on Fedora and other Linux systems) to display one of six virtual terminals. The next virtual workspace after the virtual terminals is where the GUI is, so if there are six virtual terminals, you can return to the GUI (if one is running) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. (For a system with four virtual terminals, you’d return to the GUI by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F5.)
Choosing Your Shell
In most Linux systems, your default shell is the bash shell. To find out what your current login shell is, type the following command:
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
In this example, it’s the bash shell. There are many other shells, and you can activate a different one by simply typing the new shell’s command (ksh, tcsh, csh, sh, bash, and so forth) from the current shell.
