Boot to Command Line

[mn_voyageur]

Is it possible to avoid the GUI? Can I go straight to a command line and log in and run as if in a terminal screen?

Thanks,
MarkN

[lightningfox]

You can open a terminal in the GUI by going to Applications>Accessories and click Terminal.

[mn_voyageur]

I am aware of opening a terminal.

I am curious as to whether I can boot to the command line. (The equivalent of Ctl+Alt+F2.)

MarkN

[outskut]

There are a couple ways you can do this. The easiest might just be to start a shell session while actively running Linux by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F2, but remember the second sequence to escape from the session: Ctrl-Alt-F7.

I think there's also a way to boot exclusively to the command prompt through the ubuntu recovery mode. Besides selecting the recovery mode on boot up in the Grub bootloader I don't know another way. For clarity, the grub bootloader is a menu that will prompt you which partition of your computer you want to boot from before starting up your OS. To activate your bootloader, install grub by typing into a terminal window:
sudo grub-install /dev/hda

[zhogan85]

This post tells you how, but I think if you do it this way, you will always boot to CLI. The post shows you how to change back too though.

[Paqman]

Permanent: Uninstall xorg and gdm. Or install a CLI-only system using the server, alternate or minimal .ISOs
Temporary: Boot into Recovery Mode as outskut says.

[Blackbird_13]

In order to boot to command line, I insert "text 3" at the end of the linux line in grub,cfg:

linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-28- ...... ro text 3

[oldos2er]

In /etc/default/grub, change this line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet" to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

Run sudo update-grub when done. This is easily reversed too if you need to change back.

[mn_voyageur]

Thanks. I am having problems with my GUI, so booting to CLI is preferred.

MarkN

[kindlychung]

In order to boot to command line, I insert "text 3" at the end of the linux line in grub,cfg:

linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-28- ...... ro text 3

what does 3 mean here? thanks!