how to NOT autostart Gnome (or other DE)

[fbachofner]

On Linux Mint 11 RC I can easily stop Gnome by issuing:

Code: Select all

sudo stop gdm

What I can not do so far is make is make Gnome not start on boot.

The most reasonable Google results seem to indicate editing init.tab, but that seems to be deprecated as contemporary Ubuntu variants no longer use runlevels.

Surely this is something simple, right? GDM is a service but doesn't appear in startup applications . . .

Thanks in advance for a solution!


P.S. I toyed with putting this in "newbie questions," but I doubt most newbies would want to avoid the graphical desktop environment by default. Feel free to move if a better location for the post is determined.

[SimonTS]

I've never needed to do this, but I've come up with a possibility for you;-

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1322949

There are several different methods detailed there, have a poke around and a try. The thread there is for v9.10, but I suspect they should still work just fine.

[fbachofner]

Hi SimonTS:


Thanks for the help.

The best option from that page seems to be post #3 (Feb. 5, 2010) "Edit the GRUB2 configuration defaults" which will apparently persist through "to all current and future kernels" (presupposing, I suppose, that an upgrade is not allowed to touch the GRUB2 configuration).

Post #4 advocates changing gdm.conf to stop on the runlevel that the system uses (typically 2). That works too, but since Gnome (and other DEs) do not seem to be invoked directly by runlevel [i.e. there seems nothing about Gnome in the /etc/rcX.d folders (where X=0-6)], it seems better to use the previous option.


Can anyone here comment why "Edit the GRUB2 configuration defaults" to stop Gnome from starting might be a bad idea? Is there something better than what the Ubuntu forum suggests?

Thanks!