How to configure Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME

Our Ubuntu 20.04 server's one-click install comes with CLI based access. But if you're looking for a GUI based access, you can install any one of the below GNOME Desktop environment.

Prerequisites:

  • Root access to your Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Install Vanilla Gnome

To install Vanilla Gnome shell desktop, run the following command.

apt install gnome-session gnome-terminal 

Output:

root@vps:~# apt install gnome-session gnome-terminal
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  acl adwaita-icon-theme adwaita-icon-theme-full apg aptdaemon aptdaemon-data
  aspell aspell-en at-spi2-core avahi-daemon avahi-utils bluez bubblewrap
  cheese-common colord colord-data cpp cpp-9 cracklib-runtime cups-pk-helper
  dbus-x11 dconf-cli desktop-file-utils dictionaries-common dns-root-data
  dnsmasq-base docbook-xml emacsen-common enchant-2 evolution-data-server
  evolution-data-server-common fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-cantarell
  fonts-dejavu-core fprintd gcc-9-base gcr gdm3 geoclue-2.0
  gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0 gir1.2-atk-1.0 gir1.2-atspi-2.0

Restart the server.

reboot

Install Gnome Minimal Desktop

To install Gnome Minimal Desktop, run the following command.

apt install tasksel 

Output:

root@vps:~# apt install tasksel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  laptop-detect tasksel-data
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  laptop-detect tasksel tasksel-data
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 40.0 kB of archives.
After this operation, 309 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Installing a package group using taskel.

tasksel install ubuntu-desktop-minimal

Restart the server.

reboot