I would like to start Debian without the GUI and then just type commands in to launch the desired programs (which are located on my local machine), eg

$ chromium-browser &

I already do a similar thing when sshing in to other machines on the LAN - it is handy if I need to visualise csv data for example in soffice. i currently have gnome desktop and Debian 7 installed.

I have found some instructions for disabling the GUI on startup with Debian, however I am reluctant to try them out for fear of being locked out of using the web browser once I do this (I will need it to seek help using the browser if I get stuck).

I was wondering if I could temporarily test out the method of starting the GUI on one of the other terminals (eg ctrl+alt+f1) to see if there are any problems? Will this work? Will it be equivalent to starting the GUI when booting without a GUI?

If this is feasible, please could someone provide full instructions for:

• enabling the GUI on terminal f1 so that i can run gui programs (without showing the full desktop interface)
• turning off the desktop interface GUI on bootup

obviously I will need to run X11 to load GUI programs - that's fine, but I'm looking to boot up into text mode and then just execute GUI programs as needed.