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When I type who in my console terminal, I get the following output:

hubert   :0           2014-05-16 21:40 (:0)
hubert   pts/0        2014-05-16 21:46 (:0)

From info who I know that both :0 and pts/0 should name instances of the terminal. It is clear to me what pts/0 means but I have no idea how to interpret the first line of the output.

What is even more confusing, when I type who hubert :0, I get:

hubert   pts/0        2014-05-16 21:46 (:0)
Braiam
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Hubert Siwkin
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  • Although it's not exactly a duplicate, answers to this question may help: http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/90206/34796 – drs May 16 '14 at 20:31
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    Seems like a duplicate to me, why do you think it's not really? – Barmar May 16 '14 at 20:33
  • @Barmar, you might be right. Sometimes I feel nitpickey over non-duplicate questions that have the same answer. While skimming the question, I expected a more substantive difference between asking about root :0 and :0. Upon closer review, the question is really just focusing on the :0 part too. – drs May 16 '14 at 20:39

1 Answers1

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:0 is an X display name. This means they logged in through XDM on the :0 framebuffer.

pts/0 is a pseudo-tty, this is an xterm or gnome-terminal window.

Barmar
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