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I have been using Mandrake 9.2 for a few weeks now and I am pretty happy with it so far. There have been a few bumps along the way, but nothing too bad. Now, I want to try using just the commandline, without booting into KDE at all, just to see how it is.
But first I had a few questions. First, are there any web browsers you can run from the command line? Also, is there a way to run programs in the background, like say an MP3 player and then a web browser. If so, how would you switch back to the program running in the background? And finally, if a program is made with say the KDE libraries, does KDE need to be running in order to run that program, or do you just need the KDE files installed for the program to access?
web browser = lynx
i never tried it, but maybe fire up your mp3 player in the first terminal, and then press ctrl-alt-f2 and go to another terminal and load up lynx ...
someone will tell you if thats possible or not, as like i said i never tried something like that ...
all i can say pertaining to the last question is, if it is a GUI app, then you can't run it in the terminal
I have been using Mandrake 9.2 for a few weeks now and I am pretty happy with it so far. There have been a few bumps along the way, but nothing too bad. Now, I want to try using just the commandline, without booting into KDE at all, just to see how it is.
But first I had a few questions. First, are there any web browsers you can run from the command line? Also, is there a way to run programs in the background, like say an MP3 player and then a web browser. If so, how would you switch back to the program running in the background? And finally, if a program is made with say the KDE libraries, does KDE need to be running in order to run that program, or do you just need the KDE files installed for the program to access?
Thanks,
Chris
Just try Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F6 to go to a CLI, then when you want to go back to a GUI use Ctrl-Alt-F7. You have several (6) virtual terminals like this you can use...
lynx works great from the CLI...
I'll let others reply to the rest. I am not familiar with music from CLI....
If you want to boot into proper no graphics mode you can change your defualt runlevel to 3, in the file /etc/inittab there should be somthing like:
id:5:initdefault
here, 5 is graphical mode, 3 is text, multi-user mode.
However, you should be able to switch to an old school terminal anyway with (in my distro, yours may vary) Ctrl+Alt+F1 though F7 while in your desktop manager. The first six terminals are text, the seventh is the graphical one. Or if you want to enter a lower runlevel, init 3 will send you to level 3 after booting to level 5.
lynx is a very good program, but remember almost all websites are designed to be represented graphically.
I would suggest that you first practice the terminal stuff while running KDE. Just open an xterm (or other terminal you may prefer), and put in the name of any application you want to run. I could understand that you may want to avoid KDE or Gnome because they are so heavy, but you may be better off with a light desktop like xfce4, or a window manager. Personally, I would need to run X-windows at the minimum. I do everything from the command line, but I need to open windows, etc..
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