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Following the advice from this question, I've tried to load Ubuntu without a graphics environment by replacing quiet splash in the grub boot script with text, and alternately by appending it to the parameters.

This hasn't worked; Ubuntu 17.10 still launched the Gnome Display Manager and shows the login screen. However can I boot Ubuntu 17.10 into a terminal interface? Thank you.

For future people: Rinzwind's systemctl command works for me, while the similar systemctl command from this previous question did not work. guiverc also points out that text as boot parameter only refers to outputting kernel messages as text, not to booting into a command line interface.

psacawa
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    fyi: 'quiet' reduces the boot messages, 'splash' causes a graphic (splash screen) to be shown. your use of 'text' only causes boot messages to scrolled in text on startup. they have nothing to do with gdm/gui – guiverc Jan 26 '18 at 21:17
  • "Rinzwind's systemctl command works for me, while the similar systemctl command from this previous question did not work" Similar? They're both systemctl set-default multi-user.target – muru Jan 28 '18 at 06:33

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Disabling the desktop from loading is a systemd setting

To (permanently) disable the desktop from commandline...

systemctl set-default multi-user.target

To (permanently) enable the desktop again from commandline...

systemctl set-default graphical.target

From the grub options you can also add to the boot options for a ONE time change (on reboot you either have to redo this or will get a desktop)...

systemd.unit=multi-user.target

Similar to (permanently) disabling gdm from commandline: 

systemtcl disable gdm

(gdm can be changed to any other desktop name; kdm, xdm etc).

Rinzwind
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  • Your advice for disabling gdm has worked (and I learned about systemd). Thank you. But after applying the command to restore the desktop I now get a unterminating loop on boot. It keeps alternating between showing the kernel log and trying to launch the graphics environment. Currently investigating. – psacawa Jan 26 '18 at 20:50
  • Running sudo service gdm3 start from a tty results in the same loop, as the system tries to launch Gnome and fails, momentarily showing the tty – psacawa Jan 26 '18 at 20:59
  • That gdm fails after reenabling seems to be a consequence of what I did when the graphical.target was disabled. Thanks for your help – psacawa Jan 26 '18 at 21:51