If you say Y here, you will get support for terminal devices with
display and keyboard devices. These are called "virtual" because you
can run several virtual terminals (also called virtual consoles) on
one physical terminal. This is rather useful, for example one
virtual terminal can collect system messages and warnings, another
one can be used for a text-mode user session, and a third could run
an X session, all in parallel. Switching between virtual terminals
is done with certain key combinations, usually Alt-
The setterm command ("man setterm") can be used to change the properties (such as colors or beeping) of a virtual terminal. The man page console_codes(4) ("man console_codes") contains the special character sequences that can be used to change those properties directly. The fonts used on virtual terminals can be changed with the setfont ("man setfont") command and the key bindings are defined with the loadkeys ("man loadkeys") command.
You need at least one virtual terminal device in order to make use of your keyboard and monitor. Therefore, only people configuring an embedded system would want to say N here in order to save some memory; the only way to log into such a system is then via a serial or network connection.
If unsure, say Y, or else you won't be able to do much with your new shiny Linux system :-)
The system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode. If you answer Y here, a virtual terminal (the device used to interact with a physical terminal) can be used as system console. This is the most common mode of operations, so you should say Y here unless you want the kernel messages be output only to a serial port (in which case you should say Y to "Console on serial port", below).
If you do say Y here, by default the currently visible virtual terminal (/dev/tty0) will be used as system console. You can change that with a kernel command line option such as "console=tty3" which would use the third virtual terminal as system console. (Try "man bootparam" or see the documentation of your boot loader (lilo or loadlin) about how to pass options to the kernel at boot time.)
If unsure, say Y.
This selects whether you want to include the driver for the standard serial ports. The standard answer is Y. People who might say N here are those that are setting up dedicated Ethernet WWW/FTP servers, or users that have one of the various bus mice instead of a serial mouse and don't intend to use their machine's standard serial port for anything. (Note that the Cyclades and Stallion multi serial port drivers do not need this driver built in for them to work.)
If you want to compile this driver as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called serial.o. [WARNING: Do not compile this driver as a module if you are using non-standard serial ports, since the configuration information will be lost when the driver is unloaded. This limitation may be lifted in the future.]
BTW1: If you have a mouseman serial mouse which is not recognized by the X window system, try running gpm first.
BTW2: If you intend to use a software modem (also called Winmodem) under Linux, forget it. These modems are crippled and require proprietary drivers which are only available under Windows.
Most people will say Y or M here, so that they can use serial mice, modems and similar devices connecting to the standard serial ports.
A pseudo terminal (PTY) is a software device consisting of two halves: a master and a slave. The slave device behaves identical to a physical terminal; the master device is used by a process to read data from and write data to the slave, thereby emulating a terminal. Typical programs for the master side are telnet servers and xterms.
Linux has traditionally used the BSD-like names /dev/ptyxx for
masters and /dev/ttyxx for slaves of pseudo terminals. This scheme
has a number of problems. The GNU C library glibc 2.1 and later,
however, supports the Unix98 naming standard: in order to acquire a
pseudo terminal, a process opens /dev/ptmx; the number of the pseudo
terminal is then made available to the process and the pseudo
terminal slave can be accessed as /dev/pts/
The entries in /dev/pts/ are created on the fly by a virtual file system; therefore, if you say Y here you should say Y to "/dev/pts file system for Unix98 PTYs" as well.
If you want to say Y here, you need to have the C library glibc 2.1 or later (equal to libc-6.1, check with "ls -l /lib/libc.so.*"). Read the instructions in Documentation/Changes pertaining to pseudo terminals. It's safe to say N.
If you intend to attach a printer to the parallel port of your Linux box (as opposed to using a serial printer; if the connector at the printer has 9 or 25 holes ["female"], then it's serial), say Y. Also read the Printing-HOWTO, available from <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto.
It is possible to share one parallel port among several devices (e.g. printer and ZIP drive) and it is safe to compile the corresponding drivers into the kernel. If you want to compile this driver as a module however ( = code which can be inserted in and removed from the running kernel whenever you want), say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt and Documentation/parport.txt. The module will be called lp.o.
If you have several parallel ports, you can specify which ports to use with the "lp" kernel command line option. (Try "man bootparam" or see the documentation of your boot loader (lilo or loadlin) about how to pass options to the kernel at boot time.) The syntax of the "lp" command line option can be found in drivers/char/lp.c.
If you have more than 8 printers, you need to increase the LP_NO macro in lp.c and the PARPORT_MAX macro in parport.h.