GNOME 3 is a default Ubuntu 18.04 desktop environment but this does not stop you to install and use some other desktop environments as there are many to choose from. To make your search for the best Ubuntu desktop environment easier, we choose 8 Ubuntu desktop environments for your consideration. This is the recommended method to get GNOME Shell installed in Ubuntu, if you don't plan to use Unity, KDE or any other desktop environment. With 17.10 onwards, the default Ubuntu installation uses GNOME Shell with an Ubuntu theme and dock. A vanilla GNOME Shell can be installed using the vanilla-gnome-desktop package.

Usually, it's not advised to run a GUI (Graphical User Interface) on a server system. Operation on any server should be done on the CLI (Command Line Interface). The primary reason for this is that GUI exerts a lot of demand on hardware resources such as RAM and CPU. However, if you are a little curious and want to try out different light-weight Desktop managers on one of your servers, follow this guide.

In this tutorial, I am going to cover the installation of 7 desktop environments on Ubuntu.

• MATE core
• Lubuntu core
• Kubuntu core
• XFCE
• LXDE
• GNOME
• Budgie Desktop

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu server 18.04 with SSH access
• A non-root user with sudo privileges

Before getting started, ensure that you update & upgrade your system

Next, install tasksel manager.

Now we can begin installing the various Desktop environments.

1) Mate Core Server Desktop

Installing the MATE desktop use the following command

Once the GUI is up and running launch it using the following option

2) Lubuntu Core Server Desktop

This is considered to be the most lightweight and resource friendly GUI for Ubuntu 18.04 server
It is based on the LXDE desktop environment. To install Lubuntu execute

Once the Lubuntu-core GUI is successfully installed, launch the display manager by running the command below or simply by rebooting your system

Thereafter, Log out and click on the button as shown to select the GUI manager of your choice

In the drop-down list, click on Lubuntu

Log in and Lubuntu will be launched as shown

3) Kubuntu Core Server Desktop

Xubuntu is yet another light-weight desktop environment that borrows a lot from Xfce desktop environment.

To get started with the installation of Xubuntu run the command below

Once it is successfully installed, start the display manager by running the command below or simply restart your server

Once again, log out or restart your machine and from drop the drop-down list, select Kubuntu

4) XFCE

Xubuntu borrows a leaf from the Xfce4 environment. To install it use the following command

After the GUI installation, use the command to activate it

This will prompt you to select the default manager. Select slim and hit ENTER.

Log out or reboot and select 'Xfce' option from the drop-down list and login using your credentials.

Shortly, the Xfce display manager will come to life.

5) LXDE

This desktop is considered the most economical to system resources. Lubuntu is based on LXDE desktop environment. Use the following command

To start LXDE, log out or reboot and select 'LXDE' from the drop-down list of display managers on log on.

6) GNOME

Gnome will take typically 5 to 10 minutes to install depending on the hardware and software requirements your server has. Run the following command to install Gnome

or

To activate Gnome, restart the server or use the following command

7) Budgie Desktop

Finally, let us install Budgie Desktop environment. To accomplish this, execute the following command

After successful installation, log out and select the Budgie desktop option. Log in with your username and password and enjoy the beauty of budgie!

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Sometimes you need the GUI on your Ubuntu server to handle simple day-to-day tasks that need quick interaction without going deep into the server settings. Feel free to try out the various display managers and let us know your thoughts.

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Old habits die hard, even when support for the tools required by thosehabits ended over a decade ago. It is not surprising for users to cling tothe tools they learned early in their careers, even when they are told thatit is time to move on. A recent discussion on the Debian development list showed thesort of stress that this kind of inertia can put on a distribution andexplored the options that distributors have to try to nudge their userstoward more supportable solutions.

The package in question is net-tools, the home for manyfamiliar network-configuration utilities. If you are accustomed to using commandslike ifconfig, arp, netstat, or routeto make network changes, you are a net-tools user. Many of these toolshave a long pedigree, at least in spirit, having originally been writtenbefore the first Linux kernel. Anybody who has been administeringUnix-like systems for any period of time will certainly have learned how touse the net-tools utilities to get things done.

The only problem is that net-tools is considered obsolete; indeed, it hasbeen so considered since early this century. The modern replacement is iproute2,which is actively developed and, unlike net-tools, has support for all ofthe kernel networking stack's fancier features. In theory, we all shouldhave transitioned over to iproute2 at least ten years ago.

In practice, many of us have not done that. Indeed, 'us' in this caseincludes distributors who still use net-tools utilities in a number ofpackages. Surprisingly, the net-tools developers, who have not made a newrelease since 2011, have recently resumed working on those utilities; evenmore surprisingly, they made output changes, apparently breaking scriptsthat parse that output. These changes led Debian developer Marco d'Itri tocall for the project to 'kill' net-tools,and, in particular, to stop depending on it in other packages. He wouldalso like to see the project stop installing net-tools by default.

The list of Debian packages depending onnet-tools is not that short, but it would appear to be a manageablelist if the project were to decide to fix all of those dependencies. The net-toolsmaintainer is not opposed to the idea of deprecating and eventually phasingout the package; indeed, he tried todo so in 2009. It seems to be generally agreed that the configurationscripts shipped with Debian packages should use iproute2 rather thannet-tools to ensure that the examples seen by administrators are using thecurrent tool set. So there would appear to be little controversy aroundthe idea of phasing out net-tools usage and dropping the priority of thepackage for installations.

There is less consensus around removing the package entirely, or even justdropping it from the default install. There are, it seems, quite a fewusers who have ifconfig and netstat burned into theirmuscle memory; those tools work fine for most use cases, so users don't seea strong reason to shift to iproute2. As Ted Ts'o put it:

The fact that the iproute2 commands are seen as more verbose and, by someat least, as having less readable (and less machine-parseable) outputdoesn't help either. So it's not surprising that various participants expressed their preference for the net-tools utilities,but Russell Stuart suggested that it mightbe time to move on:

(It is worth noting that the 'unnecessary' part is not universallyaccepted; it's not clear that net-tools could have been evolved to handlemodern networking configuration without incompatible changes.)

Debian, as it happens, is having this discussion a bit late. OpenSUSE discussedremoving net-tools in 2009, but has not done so. Gundam seed sub indo batch 360p. Red Hat and Fedora got seriousin 2011, and the RHEL 7 release no longer installs net-tools bydefault.The fact that this change is not universallypopular shows how reluctant users can be to let go of their long-usedtools.

None of these distributors have removed the net-tools package, and none arelikely to as long as supporting them is relatively easy and users depend onthem. But, when they do break, or when they fail to support new networkingfeatures that users need, there is not likely to be a lot of interest infixing them. Distributors have to choose where to expend their energy, andthere will come a point where dragging along obsoleted tools that the oldfolks want falls off the list.

For now, users who are accustomed to typing commands like ifconfigare probably safe; at worst, they will need to install the net-toolspackage explicitly. But anybody who is using these commands in scriptsshould probably have updated those scripts some time ago. There will comea point where those scripts break; it seems that could even happen as aresult of attempts to restart development on net-tools, rather than byexplicit deprecation. Thischeat sheet is likely to prove helpful for anybody wanting to make thetransition to the new tools.

Software transitions like this are invariably an unwanted distraction forusers who are uninterested in whatever new features are available and wouldprefer that their systems (and their habits) just continue to work. Butthe world we live in does not stand still, so such transitions are simplygoing to happen, and distributors will find themselves caught in themiddle. As those distributors strive to keep everybody happy, we shouldnot be surprised to see more of these transitions take a decade or more.

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