Is it possible to run graphical applications such as Firefox without installing a desktop environment?

command-line linux gui firefox arch-linux

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.


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.

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