[clug] Runlevel 5 vs 3 and startx

[Arafangion]

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 06:34 pm, Mr B wrote:
> Out of curiosity, I did some (very rudimentary) tests a while ago were
> I logged on remotely and measured loads on the system in various
> states.  One of the things I noticed was when the system was just
> sitting at the (default) gdm login screen it used almost no  more
> CPU/Memory power than if I was in RL 3.
>
> It was a different story once X started and a lot of crap started
> chewing resources.  Now if it's something I can do in text mode I just
> Ctrl+Atl+F1 and log in on a text window, but the graphical display is
> there if I need it (seemingly) without the overhead.  Also noticed
> that it unloaded everything when I logged out and went back to the
> login screen.  Was just wondering if there is another reason to not
> leave it on the login screen or if it's just a hangup from the old
> days?
>
> Jade

All the distinction between runlevels lie in the fact that when you use a 
computer, it generally has a task - you want to use it as a graphical 
workstation? Use runlevel 5. You want to use it as  a console system, use 
runlevel 3. You want to run it in single-user mode, I believe that's runlevel 
2.

The different runlevels merely run different scripts.