How do I boot to a command line interface instead of a GUI?

Solution 1:

Modify your file /etc/default/grub with

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

and do sudo update-grub. The machine will boot in text mode.

To start the graphical interface you do

sudo service gdm start

Edit

Starting from Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric, the default Display Manager is LightDM, so the preceding command becomes:

sudo service lightdm start