How can I add a desktop/GUI to a command-line Ubuntu installation?

I had installed Ubuntu on a VM, with a command-line only interface, now I have had enough of command-line interface experience and plan to proceed with GUI mode.

But I dont want to install a fresh copy of Ubuntu with GUI mode; I want my current [CLI] to have GUI.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed as CLI, and desired to have some light-weight (less resource consuming, slow-system friendly) GUI.

What are my options and how can I accomplish this?

Solution 1:

If you want a fully-functional desktop environment, there are lightweight ones available. Here are some, in approximate order of increasing resource consumption:

• LXDE (install lubuntu-desktop)

• Xfce (install xubuntu-desktop)

• GNOME Fallback (a.k.a. "GNOME Classic") (install gnome-session-fallback)

• Unity 2D (install ubuntu-desktop and pick Ubuntu 2D as your session type)

If you want to go lighter-weight than any of that, you can manually install the xorg package, and a lightweight window manager like openbox or fluxbox (source).

Solution 2:

Install LXDE, a fast and light-weight GUI that runs on openbox. You can do that by typing sudo apt-get update followed by sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop on the CLI.

Solution 3:

If you don't have problem with having tiling window managers, I suggest you to install DWM (by suckless) or Awesome. They are damn light and fast(quite less time to load). They seem a bit geeky for new users though. Other traditional light weight systems are there which I don't have first hand experience with. First few links in a web search should help you though.