Ubuntu

My installation does not boot to GUI. How do I get there?

Asked by srains

I am trying Linux for the first time. I installed with no shown errors. When I log into this I enter a user name and password. These are accepted ,but it just loads me into a command line. Isn't the installation supposed to load so that I boot straight into the gui. All of the help sections are set up showing operation from the gui to the command line interface. Did something get missed in my install or am I just missing a step? I am very interested in getting totally away from windows and this would be a great start. Thank you for your time.

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Luca Bedogni (me-lucabedogni) said : 		#1

Could you give us some details about your PC? Especially for the Graphic card?
Thanks

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Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said : 		#2

Which CD did you install from? Was it the graphical live CD, the alternate CD or the server CD?

By default the server CD does not install a graphical environment.

You can see if the graphical environment has been installed using the following command:-

dpkg -l xserver-xorg | grep ^ii

If you see something like this then the graphical environment is installed:-

ii xserver-xorg 7.1.1ubuntu2 the X.Org X server

If you don't see that line (the version number may be different) then you need to install the graphical components, probably the easiest way is with this command:-

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Which will install the graphical environment and lots of other apps too.

If you do have xserver-xorg already installed (the ii means installed) then you may have it configured incorrectly for your video card. To find out what video card you have run the following command:-

lspci

You should see your card listed.. For example I see a lot of lines, and one of them is:-

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0291 (rev a1)

Yours will likely differ.

Once you know the make and model of your video card you can configure the graphical environment with the following command:-

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

It will ask you questions about your video hardware, once configured you should be able to start the graphical environment with:-

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

When you later reboot your PC it should start automatically as you would expect.

Hope that helps, let us know how you get on.

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Caroline Ford (secretlondon) said : 		#3

OP says on 2016 (duplicate) that they've fixed it.

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campbellkidz1 (duane-c-1999) said : 		#4

Help me I am new to linux or ubuntu I have the latest server addition installed and logged in but how do I bring up the GUI thing, can I use that? I do not know what the heck I am doing?

<email address hidden> email also my IM

I probably put this in the rong place but I am new to this.

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billyb43 (billyb43) said : 		#5

Try sudo gdm.

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