I've got an idea. Jim and myself are much more used to Linux that boots to console.
If Jim tries ctrl-alt-f2 to get to console 2, what command can he give as root to start up in console mode? I guess one way and I think I did this, was to uninstall the desktop manager program, it was probably sddm or gdm but I forget which. I found it by running htop as root when my computer had booted up, I searched for "dm" because sddm and gdm both have "dm" in them, then I uninstalled which ever it was, and Debian behaved itself and booted into console so I could get some work done instead of playing "pin the mouse on the widget" in the GUI. By the time I figure out the graphical interface, I would have gotten all my emails read in console using alpine or mutt. What's the best way you boot into console mode? I know to go to graphics we just need to type "startx", and if we never type it, the gui stays completely out of the way. Regards, David On Fri, Aug 6, 2021, 4:12 PM Samuel Thibault <sthiba...@debian.org> wrote: > Jim Green, le ven. 06 août 2021 11:14:16 -0400, a ecrit: > > It came up asking for user name and password. > > Ok, so you did get at least some speech so there is no sound > driver/firmware issue here. > > > I guess it took it, but I was lost there. Never > > used a GUI before. > > Ok, that might be why. > The "start menu" of MATE can be opened with alt-F1 > > > Tried Alt-right arrow to get to a console. > > This shortcut will not work in X. You need to use ctrl-alt-f1 to > get back to console 1, ctrl-alt-f2 to getback to console 2, etc. > > Samuel >
