I'm not sure how well known this little trick is, but if you're looking to run a regular installation of OS X as a GUI-less CLI, with none of the bells and whistles of Aqua, Cocoa and the rest of it, then you can run the Darwin/BSD underpinnings standalone. This can result in a huge improvement on energy efficiency and as you can imagine, zero load on your Mac's GPU, reducing heat and fan operation.
If you're a power user who finds themselves working in Terminal more often than not (I'm looking at you @Lastic), then you could essentially double the battery life on a PowerBook, iBook, MacBook, etc and run the BSD command line in fullscreen with the graphical OS X essentially disabled.
1. First, go to System Preferences > Accounts (Or Users and Groups on more recent systems)
2. Click the Lock symbol and enter your admin password.
3. Go to Login Options and change the "Display login window as:" option to "Name and password".
4. Log out of your account (Cmd-Shift-Q).
5. At the login screen, in the Name field, enter: >console and hit return.
6. The screen will turn black as the graphical loginwindow service shuts down and then you'll be greeted with a familiar login prompt for full-services access to your account via the CLI.
7. Enter your login name and password as usual to get started.
As this is only a single "Virtual terminal", the best method of creating additional VTs (or tabs as in Terminal app terminology), is to use the 'screen' command. 'man screen' for documentation, but essentially;
$ screen <enter>
To create a new VT / screen, hit Ctrl-a, c
To cycle through your active screens, hit Ctrl-a, n
To select a specific screen, hit Ctrl-a, <0-9>
To leave 'screen' and return to a single-prompt, close all VT shells with 'exit'
There is also a split screen view for displaying more than one terminal at once.
Once you've mastered 'screen', install a text-based web browser such as links (sudo port install links), to start using your GUI-less OS X for web browsing, IRC, Vi, Emacs, etc.
Wifi connectivity will pick up and automatically be configured for the last connected network from your OS X session. Any services you have enabled via your account's Sharing tab (in System Preferences), such as File Sharing, will still run, so to conserve more resources, be sure to switch these off beforehand (or use 'launchctl' to enable/disable services)
With all the services disabled, an entire loaded OS, such as Tiger, will operate in as little as 50MB of active memory.
Sleep via closing the lid works fine, or you can tell the computer to sleep with 'pmset sleepnow'.
To return to your usual OS X interface, enter 'exit' at the prompt and you'll be returned to the graphical login window.
-AphoticD
If you're a power user who finds themselves working in Terminal more often than not (I'm looking at you @Lastic), then you could essentially double the battery life on a PowerBook, iBook, MacBook, etc and run the BSD command line in fullscreen with the graphical OS X essentially disabled.
1. First, go to System Preferences > Accounts (Or Users and Groups on more recent systems)
2. Click the Lock symbol and enter your admin password.
3. Go to Login Options and change the "Display login window as:" option to "Name and password".
4. Log out of your account (Cmd-Shift-Q).
5. At the login screen, in the Name field, enter: >console and hit return.
6. The screen will turn black as the graphical loginwindow service shuts down and then you'll be greeted with a familiar login prompt for full-services access to your account via the CLI.
7. Enter your login name and password as usual to get started.
As this is only a single "Virtual terminal", the best method of creating additional VTs (or tabs as in Terminal app terminology), is to use the 'screen' command. 'man screen' for documentation, but essentially;
$ screen <enter>
To create a new VT / screen, hit Ctrl-a, c
To cycle through your active screens, hit Ctrl-a, n
To select a specific screen, hit Ctrl-a, <0-9>
To leave 'screen' and return to a single-prompt, close all VT shells with 'exit'
There is also a split screen view for displaying more than one terminal at once.
Once you've mastered 'screen', install a text-based web browser such as links (sudo port install links), to start using your GUI-less OS X for web browsing, IRC, Vi, Emacs, etc.
Wifi connectivity will pick up and automatically be configured for the last connected network from your OS X session. Any services you have enabled via your account's Sharing tab (in System Preferences), such as File Sharing, will still run, so to conserve more resources, be sure to switch these off beforehand (or use 'launchctl' to enable/disable services)
With all the services disabled, an entire loaded OS, such as Tiger, will operate in as little as 50MB of active memory.
Sleep via closing the lid works fine, or you can tell the computer to sleep with 'pmset sleepnow'.
To return to your usual OS X interface, enter 'exit' at the prompt and you'll be returned to the graphical login window.
-AphoticD
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