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
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