What is the exact difference between a 'terminal', a 'shell', a 'tty' and a 'console'?

Terminal = An interface that provides a display for output and a keyboard for input to a shell session.

Shell = Interpreter that executes commands typed as strings

Console: Actually two types of console we use:

Physical console =The hardware display and keyboard used to interact with a system
Virtual console = One of multiple logical consoles that can each support an independent login session.
tty (teletype i.e., terminal) = A terminal is a basically just a user interface device that uses text for input and output messages.

4 years ago

In unix terminology, the short answer is that

terminal = tty = text input/output environment
console = physical terminal
shell = command line interpreter

4 years ago