Disable automatic unity launching?

Question

Okay my main question here, is how do I disable the auto-matic unity launch at boot, or "boot into Ctrl-Alt-F1-6 screen"

I find myself booting into that fairly quickly and then a few seconds later it launches unity login screen where from there I can login to an account and switch DE's, which then I switch back to the CLI because I only booted the machine to run a few commands anyways... I also know how to launch/get back to unity from the CLI if I boot straight into it.

Another somewhat relevant question would be which command would I use to launch openbox DE and skip the graphical login altogether?

And BTW, I'm using the current stable release of 12.04 precise pangolin...

Solution

If you absolutely don't want the graphical login screen, edit /etc/defaults/grub, Changing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX to "text". Then run update-grub.

This question has more information on how to remove the graphical splash screen too:

How do I boot into true text mode?

Basically it stops the display manager (lightdm) from loading on system startup.

Also, you can still launch it any time you want manually by doing

sudo service lightdm start

Comments

[BlitZz]

I don't know Openbox, if it includes a display manager you need to configure that to start instead of lightdm. If not, I think it may add a session to the system, so if you start lightdm you can choose an openbox session. Not really sure though; sorry.

[TenorB]

Ok this helps though...You're awesome!

[Scott Severance]

From the console, you can run startx, which is the proper way to launch an X session without using a display manager such as lightdm or gdm. Then, in your X startup file, include the command openbox &. I don't remember the name of the startup file, but reading man startx should tell you.

[TenorB]

Ok thanks this worked when I found the startup file! Although I'm usually using lightdm instead of startx...Oh well...But thank you!