Re: [orca-list] Do I always need a graphical server/interface?

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com> wrote:
> Hi Rusty,
>
> I'm not sure what distribution you are running, but you can usually
> change the default runlevel by editing
> /etc/inittab
> and change the initdefault line to 3 for a console login, or to run
> level 5 if you want it to boot directly to a graphical desktop
> environment. 

for distributions that still use System V init, this will work, but for most
distributions these days it won't, as they run Upstart (Ubuntu) or Systemd
(almost everybody else).

In general, the best solution is to disable gdm. Under Debian this can be done
with service gdm3 stop, followed by chkconfig gdm3 off

Under systemd (e.g., Arch Linux, Fedora, etc.), it's systemctl disable
gdm.service or something similar, and I don't know what it is under Upstart.

Everybody except Ubuntu is moving toward Systemd, so this craziness should go
away. We're in a period of transition at the moment. I don't know what Debian
will do, as they also want to support non-Linux kernels (FreeBSD and
GNU/Hurd).