This is a nice, quick overview of some of the more cryptic abbreviations in the Unix world. I knew a few, but I had no idea what TTY stood for.
Excavating ancient abbreviations in Linux
Perhaps the most confusing jargon in Linux relates to terminals. TTY is an old abbreviation for a TeleTYpe. Teletypes, or teletypewriters, were originally printer-keyboard combinations that read and sent information over a serial line, not too different from an ancient telegraph machine. Later on, when computers only ran in batch mode (when card readers were the only way to get your program loaded), a teletype was the only useful “real time” input/output device available. Eventually teletypes were replaced with keyboard-and-screen terminals, but the operating system still needed a program to watch the serial port where the terminal or TTY was plugged in.
