12

I have been an Ubuntu user for 2 years and am contemplating moving to Arch. I love their philosophy, The Arch Way, and I admire their tenacity to bare the system to the user. I think if I am ever going to tame my Linux Box and be a superuser, it is the only way. I am willing to go all the way to get a real Arch experience, compiling packages from source to install and editing configuration files to change system settings. However, there are applications that are a part of my daily workflow and I don't know if they will run without a gui/desktop environment. Crucial among them is Firefox.

It would be great if I could use one or two graphical applications without having to install a desktop environment. Is this possible on Linux?

Improve this question
3
  • Note that there are text-only web browsers available (e.g., lynx) which don't require a desktop environment or any of the X libraries. Useful if you only need web-browsing capability, rather than graphical web-browsing capability.
    – goldPseudo
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 19:23
  • What exactly do you mean by "desktop environment"? Do you mean large ones like KDE or Gnome, or just an X server and window manager?
    – Keith
    Commented Apr 1, 2012 at 3:40
  • related askubuntu.com/questions/50599/…
    – Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com
    Commented Aug 19, 2016 at 13:02

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
21

Well, Firefox REQUIRES X server. What you would need is to install Firefox with the help of the package management - it should install the bare minimum of the packages, including the X server. Then, you just need to run the X server without the desktop environnment. Basically something like:

$ X

Then you just start Firefox in this X server:

$ DISPLAY=:0 firefox

You can switch from the X server and the framebuffer by using CTRL+ALT+F1 and CTRL+ALT+F7.

Hope it helps.

Improve this answer
1
  • Thank you! Your answer is spot on. I am going to try it as soon as I can.
    – Harsh Vardhan
    Commented Apr 1, 2012 at 16:20
2

Without a graphical environment, you will need to use a text-based browser such as elinks/lynx, and they are really not very pretty.

You can just run X by itself, and then spawn graphical utilities from the command line specifying "server :0" manually, however this is a real bother.

If you are into minimalism, you could try a lightweight windows-manager. See Arch-wiki Window Manager for the whole list. I don't use Arch, but some people recommend Fluxbox. You will need to experiment with them to find the one you like.

Improve this answer
12
  • A window manager will be very tempting to go back to using graphical applications. I want to keep my setup as simple as possible, mainly because I intend to use my computer mostly for programming and surfing. I knew about lynx, and did try it on Ubuntu. You are right, it's not pretty at all.
    – Harsh Vardhan
    Commented Apr 1, 2012 at 16:24
  • 2
    Programming without graphical productivity applications such as IDE is like cutting your arm off before going to war. Or you have a computer with extremely little RAM.
    – harrymc
    Commented Apr 1, 2012 at 16:48
  • 7
    vim or emacs are enough for many programmers and both work well without X
    – schlicht
    Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 18:14
  • 3
    @harrymc What are your sources? What about not having graphical productivity applications is so harmful? Do you think IDEs are so much better than console-based text editors?
    – Kelmikra
    Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 19:56
  • 2
    @harrymc My experience suggests that using text editors in consoles is just as productive, if not more, than using IDEs. A cursory online searched turned up nothing relevant on the topic.
    – Kelmikra
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 15:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .