Hello there.. thanks to ANYONE and everyone who reads this in advance.

I am very new to linux but loving every minute of it so far. If I have any problem with it, it is that I can't learn if fast enough and the speeds which I am learning are far to slow for me. =/

I was wanting to know if Linux had a option like Windows XP where you hit F8 in the very beggining of loading (just past POST & BIOS start) to where you can choose the form of which you want to lod up. Meaning if you want just Linux with out X running or right into X login...

If there is no way of doing this, which file(s) do I need to configure and what needs to be configured to just let Linux load with out going into the GUI interface and what command is needed to start the GUI is it "startx"?

I have recently downloaded and installed the RedHat Fedora Core version of Linux and have installed everthing that the anaconda had listed.

thanks so very much... I am so glad I just found this site..

Sincerely,

Kevin in Alaska =)

Hi Kevinalaska,

Welcome to Linux!

THe answer to your question about the F8 boot is "no, not exactly." But there are different (better?) ways of doing what you want with Linux. To prevent booting to the GUI, it is necessary to modify a file. Look at your /etc/inittab to find a line which is:

id:5:initdefault:

As root, edit it to:

id:3:initdefault:

After you restart your computer, you will boot to text mode (full multiuser) and can start the GUI with the "startx" command. With FC1 you will get some harmless error messages at boot up, something about not being able to "umount" something or the other. This is due to the rhgb graphical boot stuff and can be eliminated, but doing so would prevent you from going back to their new "graphical boot" stuff easily. Anyway Google has lots of info on this.

If you have to force a FC1 computer to boot to the command line there are two other ways of doing it. If you have CD1, you can boot the computer from that and select "rescue mode" to repair damaged files or fix Xwindows. Alternatively, at the grub screen, select your kernel (highlight it), enter the letter "a" then the word "single" to enter single user mode. This will even give you root privileges so you could, for example, change a forgotten root password or anything else needed to restore functionality. BTW, if you're worried about malicious users who have access to the machine, you may want to password protect grub to prevent them from being able to do this!

Anyway, welcome again to Linux. If you find it only half as great as I did, you'll never want to use Windows again.

HTH,

Jim Dishaw

You can do what you want by customizing your boot menu. Edit your /etc/grub.conf (assuming you're using grub) to do this. Basically just duplicate the paragraph for the entry you usually use, and edit it's options. For example, to get a 'safe mode' option, you would create a paragraph that passes the 'single' option to the kernel (runlevel 1). The '3' option boots runlevel 3; everything but the gui. Also look at the 'timeout' option at the beginning of the file, in case the grub menu isn't appearing at all. You can configure this option so the menu does not appear unless you press a button.