Ubuntu – How to start Ubuntu without X server

So, I'm trying to install the official nVidia drivers for my fancy graphics card, and they advice disabling the X server before installing, as well as making sure that I can boot without the X server, so as not to wreck anything.
However, I seem to be doing something wrong.

As I understand it, this should be as simple as changing the runlevel from 2 to 1? (I am aware that all this may simply be me not understanding runlevels)

If that is correct, a quick test should be simply typing "sudo init 1" or "sudo telinit 1" in a terminal? Doing that makes the system attempt to shutdown, only it stops at the purple screen with the ubuntu logo and 5 white dots underneath. I haven't observed it get anywhere from there, I always end up holding down the power button. "sudo telinit 3" has not visible effect.

Alternatively, I should be able to get there using the recovery mode, activated through the grub menu?
I have very little success with that. After picking recovery mode, I am faced with a set of options about how to proceed. Both choosing the one with "network enabled" and "text only", I get a dialog explaining that this will mount my / file system in read/write mode, and whether this is what I want. I choose yes, and it seems to report that my drive is fine (there's a single line of text detailing the state of the partition). And then it stops. I haven't tried letting it sit for more than a few minutes, but presumably this process should be comparable in duration to a regular boot?

I am not particularly fond of messing with any .conf-files until I am certain that I can handle things with training wheels on. So, I guess there are two questions: the one in the title, and "how do I start a text-only session without changing defaults?"

Thanks in advance 🙂