Julia EvansApr 21, 2025

terminology poll: what would you call the part of the operating system that is responsible for managing the pseudoterminal device? (handling ioctls, tracking the foreground process, remembering the terminal window size, turning `Ctrl+C` into a SIGTERM, handling `Ctrl+S` and `Ctrl+W`, etc)

(also open to hearing that you think that it's not just one thing or anything else really)

line discipline
4.7%
terminal driver
51.4%
what?
39.6%
other
4.2%
Poll ended at .
Show threadJulia EvansApr 21, 2025

all of the code for this stuff (terminal ioctls, process groups, window size, signals, Ctrl+W, etc) in Linux seems to be in `drivers/tty` which kinda makes me want to call it this component the “TTY driver" (which helpfully implies the existence of a TTY device, which is an important thing)

(2/?)

Show threadScaliApr 22, 2025
@b0rk 'TTY', that is TeleType, one of these things:
Show threadChris Warwick
@Scali @b0rk Wow, I spent a lot of time sitting in front of one of those things back in the day, either on a phone line or locally connected to an ICL 🤣
Apr 22, 2025 at 9:52pmWeb
Show threadScaliApr 23, 2025
@ChrisWarwick @b0rk Yes, it was my first printer (on a C64 that is). My dad brought it home from work, they were getting rid of it. But those things were originally used to interface with AT&T UNIX machines, among others. Character displays came later.