Graphical terminal emulators typically provide a visual user interface that includes menus and onscreen buttons for navigating through displays and making selections from lists of available commands or options. Examples of commonly used text-based terminal emulators include PuTTY for Windows, Terminal for Mac OS X, and xterm for Linux. Text based terminal emulators provide a simple text-based interface for entering commands and displaying output from those commands. Terminal emulators can be either text-based or graphical in nature. Some systems also support proprietary emulation modes such as Wyse50/60 and SCO Console. The most common types of terminal emulators are VT100 emulators, which imitate DEC’s (Digital Equipment Corporation) original terminals from the late 1970s Xterm, which supports X Window System graphics and vt420/vt520, which is similar to VT100 but with more features.

A terminal emulator usually emulates the same kind of display used by terminals during the days when mainframes were widely used. It acts as an interface between a user and the host computer, allowing users to run programs, make changes to system settings, or access remote computers. A terminal emulator is a type of software that emulates the functions of an old-style physical terminal.

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