I remember switching between TTYs on Ubuntu Linux and being able to switch back and forth between an active X session (Unity/KDE/XFCE) and a terminal on another numbered TTY thing / virtual console. I expected the same thing to work in Slackware Linux, but it doesn't appear to and I'm trying to figure out why.

I'm running Slackware 14.2 on a ThinkPad. KDE is my default desktop environment (the one started by `startx`).

If I start an X session via `startx` on TTY1 (the default), switch to TTY2 via `Ctrl Alt F2` and then switch back with `Alt F1` (or `Ctrl Alt F1`), I don't see my X session, I see the shell session that I ran `startx` from. I can interact with the X process and suspend, interrupt, or kill it, but I can't "give it control of my monitor" again after switching away from TTY1 initially initially.

I tried running `exec startx` from my login shell instead of just `startx`, but I still don't see my X session when switching back to TTY1.


In addition to the fact that I've switched between a GUI and console in Ubuntu before using `Ctrl Alt F{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}`, this question suggests to me that it should be possible to switch between a virtual console containing a X session and one without an X session in it:

 http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/167386/how-to-switch-between-tty-and-xorg-session

Excerpt taken from one of the answers:

> Because X is running on tty1, but not on tty2. A tty is a "virtual
> terminal", meaning it is supposed to represent an actual physical
> screen and keyboard, etc. The terminals are all on simultaneously, but
> since you only have enough hardware to interface with one at a time,
> that's what you get.

This suggests that X does actually run "on" a virtual console, but I'm not exactly sure what that means.