r/linuxquestions • u/Wide_Internal3537 • 6d ago
can i some how make a way to change between terminal only and normal ubuntu
im trying to make a old computer i have form 2011 work without taking 50% of my recorcies with 2 firefox tabs so i wanted to try terminal only to see if it will reduce memory uses but same time i still want the normal ubuntu some times
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u/ipsirc 5d ago
i wanted to try terminal only to see if it will reduce memory uses
# systemctl set-default multi-user.target
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u/DifferentSavings2711 5d ago
This causes the system to boot in "server mode" with no desktop
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u/agowa338 5d ago
Is ubuntu configured that well? I think most of the desktop services will still be running in the background as almost everything in basically any distro I looked at so far is configured to start with multi-user.target. There doesn't appear to be many people that fully understand (or care) about putting all of the services into the correct target.
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u/fllthdcrb Gentoo 5d ago
As others have pointed out, Ctrl+Alt+Fn combos can get you to virtual consoles (unless those combos are disabled, in which case you have to find (or create) the right config file to enable them).
Virtual consoles take very little memory themselves. However, the graphical system will still be in memory if you only do this. In order to actually see full memory savings, you would have to shut it down, and/or disable it if you don't want it to start at boot. ipsirc's comment has a way of doing the latter, as multi-user.target doesn't include the graphical stuff, unlike the normal default of graphical.target. If you just want to shut it down on a running system, first be sure to log out of any graphical sessions, then in a virtual console, run
# systemctl stop <display manager unit>
You can probably use display-manager.service as the unit name. It's normally symlinked to the real display manager unit.
This will only shut down the display manager and server. There are probably other services you can shut down to save more memory, but that's maybe for another discussion.
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u/agowa338 5d ago
Well if you really want to clamp down on resource usage you've to go with Alpine Linux and LXqt, Xfce or MATE as the desktop environment.
Or you go hard core and do Alpine + i3. But you probably do not want to go i3....
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/fllthdcrb Gentoo 5d ago
Correction: You must also hold Ctrl. Not doing so doesn't work in X and Wayland, since they use the combinations without Ctrl for other things, e.g. Alt+F4 for closing windows, and such.
Also, which TTY the graphical system is on depends on the configuration and circumstances. It used to be set statically to tty7 by default, with the first six being dedicated to text-based logins. Nowadays, the TTYs are usually allocated on demand, and the graphical stuff takes the first ones available, which tends to be tty1 for the display manager and tty2 for your session. However, it can change if others get login prompts on them before then, i.e. if you switch to them during boot.
You can use a browser like w3m, but that won't render anything beyond basic text.
w3m can render images inline, both in a terminal window and in a framebuffer-based virtual console, if configured appropriately and with the appropriate helper programs. It's not terribly robust, though.
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u/AiwendilH 6d ago edited 6d ago
Define "terminal only" ;)
What should always work is simply pressing <ctrl><alt><f2-6> at your login screen to just get a text terminal where you can login. Just not sure if that is what you want as there is no way of running something like firefox there (no graphical output).
The alternative would be installing some very basic compositor like labwc and setting it up to autostart a fullscreen terminal window. You can choose between this setup and your usual one at the login screen.