[LeoPanthera]

On most modern distros (I think it was systemd that caused this change?) 1 is now the GUI, 2 is a text console, and 3-7 don't exist unless you manually add them.

[JdeBP]

Graphical splash screens in the RedHat bootstrap process caused the change, about 2 years before systemd even existed.

* https://lwn.net/Articles/305047/

* http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup

* https://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%...

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480113

[LeoPanthera]

I stand corrected.