Is it possible to run Bitcoin Core (GUI) at the same time as bitcoind?

I’m in a very frustrating situation. I used to run Bitcoin Core on Windows, without these problems, but ever since I switched to Linux (XFCE), and I of course have Bitcoin Core (GUI) starting automatically, I’m interrupted after like five minutes while typing/working by an indescribably annoying GUI box saying “Loading wallets…”. That’s in spite of running it with -min to start minimized and not bother me. But it does anyway.

This has become so annoying that I’ve been forced to remove Bitcoin Core from starting automatically. Instead, I will open it only when I actively need to do a Bitcoin transfer. But then a new problem arises: the blockchain will be many months outdated when I finally open it up, and then it has to sit around for a long time and sync the blockchain before I can do anything with it. Also, I can’t use its RPC API if nothing is running.

So instead I’m now starting bitcoind at boot, so that it will run in the background without a GUI and keep the blockchain up to date.

But now, there’s a new problem: if I start Bitcoin Core (GUI) while bitcoind is running in the background, I get an error saying that it can’t obtain a lock of the blocks dir or something along those lines. Obviously, this is because bitcoind is already working on the block dir.

I can “solve” this by first running a script which calls the RPC API with the “stop” command, so that bitcoind shuts down safely (killing the process is not safe). Then I’m able to open Bitcoin Core (GUI) and start using it.

But, as you can imagine, this is anything but an ideal situation. I now have to both remember to not just start the Bitcoin Core (GUI) program when I need it, but also to first dig up and run that script to first shut down bitcoind. And then, after I’m done in Bitcoin Core (GUI), I need to shut it down and again start bitcoind to go back to the same state as before. It just makes my skin crawl.

Is there some hidden option I can send when opening Bitcoin Core (GUI) so that instead of trying to run its own stuff, it just “hooks into” the existing bitcoind?