Install Desktop environment on Ubuntu Server

3 min readJun 5, 2020

In this post, we will use vermin to have Ubuntu VM desktop up and running in minutes using Vermin.

In this post, we will use ubuntu-mate-desktop, however you are free to install any desktop environment you like.

We will use vermin as it is a simple virtual machine program that uses Virtualbox as the underlying hypervisor.

To follow this tutorial, you will have to install vermin.

First, you need to install Virtualbox, then for Linux and macOS, in a terminal window:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mhewedy/vermin/master/install.sh)"

And for Windows, Open a PowerShell terminal as an administrator then use:

iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mhewedy/vermin/master/install.ps1'))

mhewedy/vermin

github.com

First, let’s create Ubuntu VM using vermin.

Open a Terminal (or PowerShell console in case of windows) and type:

vermin create ubuntu/focal

vermin created Ubuntu VM with the name vm_07 the name might be different in your case, however.

Now let’s login into the newly created VM vm_07, and install ubuntu-mate-desktop

From the host OS Terminal/PowerShell type:

vermin ssh vm_07

Then inside the vm_07 session, type:

sudo apt install -y tasksel && sudo tasksel install ubuntu-mate-desktop

It will take a while downloading ubuntu-mate-desktop

Wait until it is done.

Now you can safely exit the session:

The latest step is to restart the VM after the ubuntu-mate-desktop has been installed and start the GUI session into it.

From the host Terminal/PowerShell, restart VM by using:

vermin restart vm_07

Now, let's start GUI session inside Ubuntu VM by typing in the host Termina/PowerShell:

vermin gui vm_07

You will notice a window is opening as following:

After login, you can change the display configurations the way you like it:

References:

linuxconfig.org