Boot into the terminal, then launch the mate desktop

Support & Help Requests
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#1

I want to skip the login screen gui and boot directly from terminal, then login and launch the mate desktop.
Here is an example:

Also i have ubuntu m 16.04 and my home folder encrypted.

#2

I used to achieve the same result by removing or disabling the lightdm-gtk-greeter package.

Though it’s probably better to wait 'til someone more knowledgeable chimes in.

I think that irrespective of the desktop environment the method is roughly the same:

https://superuser.com/questions/1106174/boot-ubuntu-16-04-into-command-line-do-not-start-gui

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#3

I’m not sure the author of the video is really doing a login in the TTY as we don’t see the username or password prompt appearing. It rather looks like there is autologin active and the prompt is shown for a second between the end of boot and the X server starting.

IMO, the easiest way to skip the login screen and start the desktop would simply to set a user to autologin in LightDM, unless you have multiple users on you computer and want to login manually anyway (albeit without the LightDM screen)?

If you want to autologin with LightDM, edit the config file:

sudo pluma /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

and add the following (where xxx is your username):

[SeatDefaults]
autologin-user=xxx
autologin-user-timeout=0

If you really want to disable LightDM and login in a TTY, I guess you can disable it like this (I haven’t tested):

sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service

(“enable” instead of “disable” to reenable it.)

And to automatically start the desktop session, you’d have to add the command startx to the proper user init file. Not sure which one, probably ~/.profile. It would have to be done for every user if you have more than one account.

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