How to remove Gnome from Ubuntu Desktop 14.04

Question

I need to use Ubuntu Desktop on my server for certain reasons because I can't use Ubuntu Server, but to make it more efficient I would like to remove the desktop environment and boot straight to the shell, all the other questions I saw the answer were for older versions of Ubuntu and the commands they posted did not work, mostly because it said those packages were not found.

All in all I just need the desktop environment gone and boot to the shell.

Solution 1

sudo apt-get purge unity gnome-shell lightdm

sudo apt-get clean

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get -f install

Solution 2

If it is already installed, you can remove the Ubuntu Desktop metapackage and install the server softwares you need:

sudo apt-get install openssh

Configure SSH according to your needs. Then:

sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get autoremove

Comments

[bain]

Also see How to remove desktop environments?

[Wargog]

This will allow me to boot to the shell still right?

[sbergeron]

yeah, and if it doesn't boot directly into the shell then you can just press ctrl+alt+f1 and that will bring you to a shell and the ubuntu/unity desktop won't be running

[Nabeel K]

how can I reinstall all this. I accidentally did the above and cant recover it back

[sbergeron]

@beardedbeast Are you able to get to a tty? If so then just do an apt-get install lightdm [desktop environment of your choice]