Is it possible to run graphical applications such as Firefox without installing a desktop environment?

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?

Harsh Vardhan

Posted 2012-03-31T18:43:25.483

Reputation: 125

– Ciro Santilli 新疆改造中心法轮功六四事件 – 2016-08-19T13:02:35.497

Note that there are text-only web browsers available (e.g., lynx) which don't require a desktop environment or any of the X libraries. Useful if you only need web-browsing capability, rather than graphical web-browsing capability. – goldPseudo – 2012-03-31T19:23:31.940

What exactly do you mean by "desktop environment"? Do you mean large ones like KDE or Gnome, or just an X server and window manager? – Keith – 2012-04-01T03:40:10.943

Answers

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.

Evengard

Posted 2012-03-31T18:43:25.483

Reputation: 1 500

Thank you! Your answer is spot on. I am going to try it as soon as I can. – Harsh Vardhan – 2012-04-01T16:20:22.763

Without a graphical environment, you will need to use a text-based browser such as elinks/lynx, and they are really not very pretty.

You can just run X by itself, and then spawn graphical utilities from the command line specifying "server :0" manually, however this is a real bother.

If you are into minimalism, you could try a lightweight windows-manager. See Arch-wiki Window Manager for the whole list. I don't use Arch, but some people recommend Fluxbox. You will need to experiment with them to find the one you like.

harrymc

Posted 2012-03-31T18:43:25.483

Reputation: 306 093

2@harrymc What are your sources? What about not having graphical productivity applications is so harmful? Do you think IDEs are so much better than console-based text editors? – Kelmikra – 2016-06-09T19:56:49.877

@Kelmikra: This is too vast a subject for discussing here. – harrymc – 2016-06-09T20:05:11.380

@harrymc I see. What about just pointing to some sources that discuss this? – Kelmikra – 2016-06-10T14:52:13.203

@Kelmikra: One can find sources in every direction, but experience speaks louder than any source. – harrymc – 2016-06-10T15:00:12.263

2@harrymc My experience suggests that using text editors in consoles is just as productive, if not more, than using IDEs. A cursory online searched turned up nothing relevant on the topic. – Kelmikra – 2016-06-11T15:04:49.337

@Kelmikra: We may differ on experience. Large projects may be very hard to work on file-by-file, for example when refactoring. An IDE can automate many development and maintenance functions. – harrymc – 2016-06-11T16:15:32.073

@harrymc That sounds right. My understanding is that text editors are useful for working on individual files, while IDEs are good for integrating files in large projects. – Kelmikra – 2016-06-12T15:03:17.720

@Kelmikra: IDEs can also have helpful side-panels and do auto-complete and have actions such as "go to definition" or "show all uses of" etc. etc. – harrymc – 2016-06-12T15:09:27.437

@harrymc I suppose there is little reason for us to continue discussing this, given that it has been discussed elsewhere (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206755/ide-vs-text-editor).

– Kelmikra – 2016-06-13T15:31:15.140

A window manager will be very tempting to go back to using graphical applications. I want to keep my setup as simple as possible, mainly because I intend to use my computer mostly for programming and surfing. I knew about lynx, and did try it on Ubuntu. You are right, it's not pretty at all. – Harsh Vardhan – 2012-04-01T16:24:30.683

2Programming without graphical productivity applications such as IDE is like cutting your arm off before going to war. Or you have a computer with extremely little RAM. – harrymc – 2012-04-01T16:48:26.237

6vim or emacs are enough for many programmers and both work well without X – schlicht – 2013-08-23T18:14:30.103