When running a server I strongly recommend to use commands as the means of operating your services. Firstly, it makes your system lighter, secondly it poses less system vunlerabilities and instabilities. But of course if you seek to make your life a bit easier, I propose to install the lightest GU interface possible. In our case it is going to be Lubuntu-Core

Step 1 – Install Tasksel

Tasksel allows to install different Desktop environments. Let us install it on our server. $ sudo apt-get install tasksel  Step 2 – List all available environments$ tasksel –list-task

here you will see all the possible environments. For the purpose of this tutorial we choose Lubuntu-Core

Step 3 – Lubuntu – Core Installation

$ sudo tasksel install lubuntu-core

Step 4 – Start the new desktop environment

In order to start the service please type the following command:

$ sudo service light_dm start

Step 5 – Reboot the server

$ reboot -f

After reboot you will land on Login screen with graphical interface

In each operating system there are must-know command lines, which will significantly improve your effecivness is managing your system. Here are a few chosen ones, which I strongly suggest to memorise by heart 

$ uname -a

Displays kernel version

$ ifconfig

Displays full IP configuration

$ ip addr show eth0

Similarly to ifconfig – shows the ip config of the physical network adapter

$ df -ah

Shows Disk space usage

$ service udev status

Shows services status: Note that this is an old version syntax. You might need to use the next command version

$ systemctl status udev

Shows sevrvices status (new version)

$ du -sh home

Shows disk usage for /Home folder

$ netstat -tulpn

Shows active internet connections. It shows which process / service is listening on which port. IT gives information about Program name and Process ID

$ top

Information about processes

$ htop

Information about processes

$ man

e.g. $ man ifconfig

This will open the manual for any command explaining to you the purpose of a command and its options

$ sudo etc/init.d/ stop

e.g. $sudo etc/init.de/apache2 stop

This will stop any service that you type in. You can use:

stop, start or restart as an option to this command

$ ls

$ ls -l
$ ls -a
$ ls -la

LS lists all the files in a directory.

Parameter -a displays all filess inc. hidden files.

Parameter -l displays all information about the files and folders

$ tcpdump

Listen to traffic on a chosen port.

tcpdump -ni eth0 udp and port 1194