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Reddit has the most concise answer https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/41u5hw/comment/cz5ejh6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/41u5hw/c

Reddit has the most concise answer https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/41u5hw/comment/cz5ejh6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/41u5hw/comment... > A terminal is a physical device with a keyboard and screen connected to a computer running various OS types. A tty is the Unix device name for a physical or virtual terminal connection. A shell is the Unix command interpreter. A console is a generic term for a primary i/o device or interface. In unix terms the console is where the boot/startup messages are sent to. After bootup the console effectively becomes a terminal.

benj111 3y ago
Ish. A tty can refer to a device name, or a physical terminal. A terminal can refer to a physical or virtual terminal. A console could also refer to a physical device, although I'm not aware of it being used in this context. The problem is that computing is all metaphors. Metaphors leak and once we lose one meaning (enough) we stop clarifying to differentiate. We don't generally need to differentiate between a physical terminal and a virtual terminal, so we don't.
- cobbaut 3y ago
  > A console could also refer to a physical device, although I'm not aware of it being used in this context. I thought that the console is used for any device (or application) that listens to /dev/console (at least on Linux).