Arch Linux – Run Graphical Applications Without Full Desktop Environment

arch linuxcommand linefirefoxguilinux

I have been an Ubuntu user for 2 years and am contemplating moving to Arch. I love their philosophy, The Arch Way, and I admire their tenacity to bare the system to the user. I think if I am ever going to tame my Linux Box and be a superuser, it is the only way. I am willing to go all the way to get a real Arch experience, compiling packages from source to install and editing configuration files to change system settings. However, there are applications that are a part of my daily workflow and I don't know if they will run without a gui/desktop environment. Crucial among them is Firefox.

It would be great if I could use one or two graphical applications without having to install a desktop environment. Is this possible on Linux?

Best Answer

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.

Related Solutions

Linux – How to Set Shutdown Permissions

The question asked by K.Chen is: why do I need sudo privileges when I do it from CLI, ahile I do not need such privileges when I do it from the GUI.

The first part of the answer is that people who design Desktop Environments, like Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Mate, Cinnamon, ... try to simplify the work of their users, and they configure shutting down and rebooting without requiring sudo credentials. This, incidentally, implies that there must be a shutdown sequence which does not involve the program shutdown, which does require sudo privileges (no way around that).

I do not know in detail how each DE does it, but I know that there is a gentle way to bring down, or restart/shutdown/hibernate your system, which does not require root privileges. You can find the original post in an Arch Linux Forum post. In essence, it amounts to issuing hese commands:

halt

 #!/bin/bash
 dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit"/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Stop

reboot

 #!/bin/bash
 dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit"  /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Restart

dbus-suspend

 #!/bin/bash
 dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

hibernate

 #!/bin/bash
 dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Hibernate

My guess is that the GUI buttons use roughly these commands. To be certain one should look into the code, but I believe this is a safe bet.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to Set Shutdown Permissions

Related Question