Talk:Linux console
Differences between the Linux virtual console and terminal emulators
The Linux console is typically used when no graphical user interface (GUI, such as X.org or Wayland) is in use when a Linux computer is booted and ready for use. Also, by default only keyboard (stdin) and an attached display/monitor (stdout/stderr) are available. The main difference between the Linux console and a GUI terminal emulator is the Linux virtual consoles are attached directly to TTY devices (TeleTYpe, a throwback to the UNIX roots of Linux, /dev/ttyN) whereas the shells within a terminal emulator are pseudo-TTYs (/dev/pty*). The Linux console by default doesn't use the mouse/pointer as an input device (though GPM could be used for that). Also, terminal emulators generally have a much richer set of fonts available compared to the Linux console.
Terminal emulators also can have a number of features built-in, such as tabs, splitting the window vertically or horizontally (with separate shells in each tab/pane), scrollback buffers/sliders, background images (with transparency), etc. You can achieve the tabs, split windows, and scrollback buffers in the Linux console with terminal multiplexers like Tmux or GNU Screen, or this can be done within certain TUI programs (e.g. Vim), but that's outside the scope for this article.