I’d like to keep XCFE for VERY occasional use, so when I’m not using it I’d like to quit it. Also I don’t want it to start at boot. I’ve found a bunch of ways of uninstalling it but that’s not what I’m after, I just want to make sure it is not running unless I start it.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    6·
    11 months ago

    sudo systemctl disable lightdm

    You’ll boot into a text tty login prompt. Log in, and run startx to start your X session. You don’t need lightdm at all.

    Or, if you do want to run the session manager, log in and run sudo systemctl start lightdm. You’ll still be logged into tty1, so you might want to switch back to that and log out if you’re concerned about physical security at your device, but it doesn’t otherwise hurt anything.

  • captcha [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    Use systemctl:

    • to turn off lightdm, sudo systemctl stop lightdm. This will also shut down xfce if it was started with lightdm.
    • to permamently not start lightdm at boot, sudo systemctl disable lightdm.
    • to start xfce whenever you want it just run start-xfce.

    Note: this will mean that you computer will boot directly to tty instead of any graphical display, which I assume is what you wanted.

    • mub@lemmy.zipOP
      3·
      11 months ago

      That’s bang on. Thanks. Feels like I should have worked that out, but I just assumed it would be more fiddly.

  • onTerryO@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    To stop the lightdm from starting, you should be able to disable it by this command:

    sudo systemctl disable lightdm

    If XFCE still starts automatically, then check your .bash_profile. If there is a line like:

    exec startxfce4

    then put a # in front of it. Once that is done, you can start XFCE any time by typing exec startxfce4 at the command line. When in XFCE, if you log out it should put you back to your command prompt.