I'm working with a headless Linux setup and prefer not to rely on a desktop environment or window manager. Normally, I SSH into the machine for my tasks, but there are times when I'd connect it to a monitor. I want to run GUI applications without them booting straight into a graphical interface by default. It's a bit like how DOS worked where you'd just launch a program that enabled mouse support. My main need is to play videos sometimes and improve the appearance of my SSH session—since my local terminal looks awful compared to the one I use for SSH. I'd love to have a better local terminal experience, potentially with something like Ghostty when connected to a monitor. Also, I'm open but not necessarily looking to watch videos if that's asking too much. Any advice on achieving this would be appreciated!
5 Answers
You'll likely need to set up a Window Manager like `i3` or just go with `sway` for a minimalistic option. This way, you can boot without a GUI but still access a graphical environment when necessary. You can start your session from the login TTY or use `nomachine` to link to a `sway` session remotely.
You might want to check out using `xterm` for SSH sessions. I've had success running Wireshark through it on a VM, but I can't say how it performs on a bare metal setup. For local monitoring, you could still need a window manager (WM) based on what others have mentioned.
You technically don't need a full DE or WM, but a display server supporting X11 or Wayland is essential if you want to run traditional graphical applications. This includes rendering fonts and colors similarly to how they appear over SSH.
Most GUI applications rely on a Window Manager or Desktop Environment. Unfortunately, if you're keen on having a lightweight setup, you'd have to install something like `openbox` or `icewm`, which won’t take much memory and could run quietly in the background.
SSHing with `-X` does allow you to run GUI apps directly on your local machine as long as they're X-based. For local use, if a keyboard, mouse, and monitor are involved, you may need to install components to get a better graphical experience, though it doesn't have to initiate automatically.
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