# Can I boot straight into command line?



## XunilNewb (Jan 13, 2005)

Just a quickie...

I have both KDE & Gnome installed, my machine however is slow and although I want to keep Gnome and KDE for now, I want a way of booting into the command line to conserve resources. Is this possible without deleting GNome and KDE? If so, will I be able to load Gnome from the command line or would that require a reboot?


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## batty_professor (Jul 29, 2004)

There is a way, when you configure boot options, to select a graphical interface, or not. If no GUI is selected I believe you'll boot to a bash prompt. I can't really offer how to set it up, but I know it's there. I think the boot options will give you a list from which to pick.


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## XunilNewb (Jan 13, 2005)

*Boot settings...*

HI again, don't want to pester, but how do I configure my boot settings? Is this something I can do from the bash prompt or is it something you do by rebooting with f7 held down (or whatever function key it is, I can never remember).


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## batty_professor (Jul 29, 2004)

If you will click the "hat" on the panel, in the menu is system configuration, probably not that exact terminology. But in the GUI that comes up is boot options.


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## XunilNewb (Jan 13, 2005)

*Thanks Batty-p*

Cheers pal! :smile:


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

If you want to computer to boot straight to the command line, then you need to set your default runlevel to 3. Runlevel 5 will boot you to a GUI by default. In order to change this, edit the /etc/inittab file in your favorite text editor (as root) and locate the first uncommented line in the file. It should look something similar to this:

id:5:initdefault:

Change it to look like this:

id:3:initdefault:


Save the change and reboot. Certain distro's offer GUI based ways of changing this, but I don't know what all of them are since they're all different. :smile:


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## XunilNewb (Jan 13, 2005)

That's great, I knew there'd be a way of doing it in the bash prompt. Cheers


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