For those of you wondering how to make Fedora Linux boot into text mode – here’s how to disable the graphics boot/login screen:

If you are running an older distribution you need to edit the file /etc/inittab (must be root) and change

id:5:initdefault:
    to
id:3:initdefault:

If you are running a NEWER distribution can disable the graphical boot by editing your boot loader kernel params. You can verify that your disrtibution is of the newer breed if your /etc/inittab file starts with a big comment saying:

# inittab is no longer used when using systemd.
#
# ADDING CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.

If this is the case then edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf (again – root access will be required) and look for the block of lines booting your distro. On a new installation it is usually the first block that looks lie this:

title FC15-WD1TB (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686 ro root=UUID=902efd28-c5f3-423f-8051-6a369df24848 rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
    initrd /initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686.img

Delete rhgb quiet from the end of the kernel entry and add text 3

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One Response to How to disable Linux FC graphical boot (start in text mode)

  1. Alex says:

    In recent Fedora versions (at least as early as fc22, possibly earlier) the inittab file contains instructions how to set your default boot target, namely:

    # inittab is no longer used.
    #
    # ADDING CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.
    #
    # Ctrl-Alt-Delete is handled by /usr/lib/systemd/system/ctrl-alt-del.target
    #
    # systemd uses 'targets' instead of runlevels. By default, there are two main targets:
    #
    # multi-user.target: analogous to runlevel 3
    # graphical.target: analogous to runlevel 5
    #
    # To view current default target, run:
    # systemctl get-default
    #
    # To set a default target, run:
    # systemctl set-default TARGET.target

    … so just do:
    systemctl set-default multi-user.target

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