Date: 11-11-2015

CENTOS 6 OR OLDER

1. Edit inittab

 sudo vi /etc/inittab 

2. Add/Change "5" to "3" in the following line at end:

 id:5:initdefault: 

becomes:

 id:3:initdefault: 

3. Reboot
4. Log in with text mode

NOTE: The system will just operate purely in CLI mode. If you should ever want to temporally use a GUI you can invoke one with a startx command. NOTE: 5 = Runlevel 5, 3 = Runlevel 3

CENTOS 7

From terminal enter the following to turn GUI off:

    systemctl set-default multi-user.target 
    multi-user.target = runlevel 3 

or ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

From terminal enter the following to turn GUI on:

    systemctl set-default graphical.target 
    graphical.target = runlevel 5 

or ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target