Richard Cavell wrote:
How do I exit from kde to the command line? (Ctrl-Alt-F1 will not do this).
If you mean that Ctrl-Alt-F1 does not switch you to a console, then something's broken (perhaps keyboard mapping?) I can think of two alternatives:
1) Go ahead and log into KDE, and from a Terminal window, issue the command (as root) "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" (as below you indicate gdm as being your login manager, as opposed to xdm, wdm, or kdm). Generally you don't want to kill gdm/X from within X this way, but it should work.
2) Reboot, and at the boot: prompt/menu, enter "linux single" which should boot you into single-user mode.
Once at the console with either of these two methods, there are several ways of deactivating gdm. If you're just doing it temporarily, my usual method of choice is to add the single line "exit 0" as the first executable line of the /etc/init.d/gdm script. You could also remove/rename the symlink in /etc/rc.2, remove/rename the script in /etc/init.d, remove the gdm package, etc.
Secondly, how do I make my computer boot with no kde at all? My default runlevel is 2, and in /etc/rc2.d I have:
See above.
gdm is your login manager. That's where X (not KDE) is being started. KDE is started when you log in from gdm with the menu options set to start KDE (either directly, or indirectly via your ~/.xinitrc file).S99gdm Where is kde being started?
-- Kent