Installing GUI and VNC on Ubuntu Server

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Ubuntu Tutorials

1- Install GUI for Ubuntu Server
2- Install VNC Server
3- Install VNC Viewer (VNC Client)

1- Install GUI for Ubuntu Server

After being installed, Linux Servers have no user interface. In the post, I will show you the way to install XFCE4, this is a lightweight graphical user interface but it is friendly to the majority of users.

Note: In case I use PuTTY to connect it to Unbuntu Server and execute commands to install XFCE4. You can execute direct commands on Ubuntu Server.

You can see more about PuTTY here:

Installing and using PuTTY

Open PuTTY and connect to Ubuntu Server.

We have direct XFCE installing packages from Unbuntu's Software Repositories.

Run command:


sudo apt-get update

Next, running the command to install XFCE:


sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies

If you get the "Unable to locate package xfce4" error message, you need to add universe repository to your system:
sudo add-apt-repository universe

sudo apt update
 

After being installed, XFCE will takes about 523MB, pressing Enter to confirm the installing

XFCE is being installed:

XFCE has been installed successfully.

2- Install VNC Server

Install VNC Server:

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

Next, you need to run VNC Server on Ubuntu. Then, installing VNC Client to your computer to be able to talk with VNC-Server. At that time, you can work with Ubuntu Server having the XFCE graphical user interface.

Running command:

vncserver

If you get "Could not open default font 'fixed'" error message, please install xfonts-base on your system.
sudo apt-get install  xfonts-base
Restart Ubuntu Server.