Linux mint without gui

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Installing Linux Mint with out the GUI ..

Post by Spud1200 » Sun Jun 12, 2016 10:36 pm

I have just downloaded Mint for an old 32 Bit PC . I was hoping if possible to disable the GUI and run the Command Line .

I have no real experience with Linux Command Line but really should learn. The Laptop is old so I was hoping to free system resources by doing this and learning the Command Line.

Can anyone tell me how to disable if possible the GUI upon Boot or Installation .

Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Installing Linux Mint with out the GUI ..

Post by rene » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:03 pm

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub 

and reboot into a GUI-less session.

In fact, might as well replace that first bit with, e.g.,

or alike. You’ll have to learn to make do without things like gedit, after all

When I just now tried, the old «startx» method of starting X did put me on my regular desktop but in software-rendering mode. That doesn’t make immediate sense and if you’d like to have startx functional I’ll leave it up to you to figure that one out.

As far as I’m aware Mint does not offer a GUI-less install option in any edition.

Re: Installing Linux Mint with out the GUI ..

Post by rene » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:51 pm

The software-rendering thing is only a permission issue on /dev/dri. Adding yourself to the video group — sudo usermod -a -G video $(whoami) — solves that part. You will still have various issues such as inserted CD-ROMs not appearing on your desktop and won’t be able to for example reboot from the «quit» dialog. This is PolicyKit territory hence a disaster to debug. Or de-nonbug, in this case, but anyways.

Re: Installing Linux Mint with out the GUI ..

Post by Mute Ant » Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:46 am

The Live Session install needs pretty much the same resources as a running installation. 10GB disk space, 512MiB RAM and a 2GHz CPU will do; more is better. If your machine has those, we can get you a Mint that installs normally and runs okay.

It’s possible to manually install Mint without a GUI; you do what the Ubiquity installer would do. It’s not a task for someone learning console commands though, and the effort is pointless if your machine just hasn’t got what it takes to run Mint.

There are Mint-like distributions that manage with less. PeppermintOS6, for example, fits in a 4GB partition and uses less RAM for the GUI. and distributions like Finnix that just don’t have a GUI.

Re: Installing Linux Mint with out the GUI ..

Post by rene » Mon Jun 13, 2016 11:02 am

As to alternatives certainly also Debian itself, if you’d like to share a base(-knowledge). I have a current GUI-less Debian 8 installed on a puny Duron 750 MHz with 768 MB RAM that works fine.

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What I Want

I want to run a box as (typically) a ‘server’ (no GUI) and occasionally with the GUI because some things are easier that way. I’m working with Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon. I want to boot to console and not start mdm but I want to be able to switch back, so solutions involving totally removing mdm won’t work well for me.

What I’ve Tried

For the default boot, I have edited grub (whole file below) GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=»text» and run sudo update-grub but mdm still started; then I tried to set mdm to manual with echo manual | sudo tee /etc/init/mdm.override but mdm still started. I can stop mdm manually with sudo service mdm stop which is close to what I want.

What’s Wrong With My Solution

My best solution has me boot, starting mdm as usual, and then I must stop mdm manually. I want the machine to start normally from a reboot or power cycle except the GUI doesn’t start at all (unless I tell it to, e.g. by editing grub or choosing a different option in the grub menu). By ‘start normally’ I mean that services like tomcat start and I can still rsh to the machine and/or remote debug it.

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 #GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="text" # Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs # This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains # the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD . ) #GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" 

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Linux mint without gui

I thought I would write a brief tutorial on this since it was difficult to figure out on forums and other intermediate users may be interested.

For those of you who would like your Mint system to boot directly into console mode, it is quick and easy to do and easy to un-do as well. This was difficult for me to figure out as Mint seems to operate somewhat differently than other Linux versions in terms of making this change. This was written for Mint 10 64 bit. Not sure how it may vary from other versions.

Edit your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and add the word «text» after the words «quiet splash» under the section that starts with ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###. Be sure to use sudo to edit the file (don’t use the » marks).

1. Make a copy of the file in case «something goes bad»: cd /boot/grub > sudo cp grub.cfg grub.cfg.bakup.

2. Open the grub.cfg file (I prefer pico but use your editor of choice): sudo pico grub.cfg.

3. Use the arrow key to scroll down until you see ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###.

4. Continue down a few lines more and find the line that resembles linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6. ending in vga=792 quiet splash

5. Add the word «text» after «quiet splash» (no quotation marks)

6. Save the file: in pico use cntrl>x, y to replace and enter to save.

7. Reboot. Use terminal to get used to it: sudo shutdown -r now

8. Login using your normal login name and password.

If you want to return to automatically booting into GUI mode, simply redo the above steps only removing the word «text».

To start GUI mode from console mode, simply type startx

To end GUI mode and return to console, simply logout using the Mint Menu.

You lose the ability to «switch users» in GUI mode. Instead you need to logout to console, type exit and then login again using the different user’s name and password.

If people find this post useful, I can write another with some of the cool programs I run from terminal and the tools I use to get many of my «home computer» needs done without GUI.

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Linux mint without gui

I’ve been experimenting with running various linux distributions (Ubuntu 16.04, Arch) in a VM with xorg set to use the dummy driver and x11vnc to attach to the :0 display session and present it to VNC clients. I have this working with Unity and KDE plasma so far.

I would love to do the same for Linux Mint since Cinnamon is my preferred desktop environment, But since the Mint installer is gui-only, I’m not exactly sure how to accomplish this.

I’m using bhyve/iohyve in FreeBSD as my type2-hypervisor. I’m able to attach a console to the Mint VM and login with the ‘mint’ account when installing the iso.

At this point, I assume I’ll need to use ‘parted’ to setup the disk partitions by hand, but am not sure how to proceed from here to actually get Mint manually installed onto those partitions.

Does anyone have some pointers?

I’ve been continuing to work on this, and believe that the better path to take would be to figure out how to get a graphical console to the VM instead of only a text console. While researching that, I learned that FreeNAS 10 will support graphical consoles for UEFI OSes. So that immediately solves this deadlock, letting me run the graphical installer initially, and then I can muck with the xorg configuration to make it become headless after it is properly installed.

I’d still love to play with it now, but it is probably not worth the effort to do a manual CLI install since it looks like graphical is possible (or will be once I am able to upgrade).

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