ubuntu 10.10 GUI not loading

[awal57]

I have installed ubuntu 10.10 32 bit on an old dell pe 1550 i686 with 512mb of ram. i raided 2 drives and attempted the install and it says that it is complete but it asks me to login in a command prompt that looks like DOS and I never get to a GUI am I missing something or should I expect a GUI? somebody help I'm lost!

[TeoBigusGeekus]

What are you pc specs? Especially your graphics card.

[awal57]

two 1133mhz processors and the ram is actually 1024mb, it says that the video memory is 4mb sdram, other than that I have no clue. I bought it for 40 bucks and thought I could experiment with linux and building a web and mail server, but I was expecting a GUI since I'm pretty green when it comes to command prompts and the like.

[seawolf167]

If you have a capable video card and have the GUI installed (versus the server option), try entering this: (assuming you are getting a command line login option)

startx

You can try to start the script manually by doing:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Though in 10.10 this should work too:

sudo service gdm start

If that doesn't start, you can attempt to reconfigure the xserver

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then follow the prompts

[TeoBigusGeekus]

If the above commands don't work, find your graphics card with

lshw | grep VGA

[awal57]

that my be an answer to my problem, I installed the server edition but I'll look to see what my graphics card is. thanks

[seawolf167]

The server edition does not come with a GUI installed. Since you just installed Ubuntu on your computer it might be easiest to just reinstall with the non-server (i.e. Desktop) version (ensuring that everything works properly), otherwise this thread has info on installing the gui.

Its basically just:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

[awal57]

ok by installing the non server edition I can still run a wab and mail server correct? and I wouldnt lose any functionality would I?

[seawolf167]

You will lose CPU cycles due to the computer running the GUI, you will gain a GUI and some additional installed programs.

Basically, no, you won't lose functionality