Disclaimer: These commands are correct to the best of my knowledge and i have personally used them to remove ubuntu-desktop, but I provide no guarantees that this won’t hose your particular system, so as always, you undertake these steps at your own risk.


# /etc/init.d/gdm stop
# apt-cache search ubuntu-desktop|grep Depends:|sed s/Depends:\ // |sed s/,//|xargs apt-get remove --purge

This will auto abort, View the list make sure its not going removing anything critical, then run the command again appending ‘-y’ to the end.

# apt-cache search ubuntu-desktop|grep Recommends:|sed s/Recommends:\ // |sed s/,//|xargs apt-get remove --purge

Same process again.

# apt-get autoremove

There can sometimes be straggling packages left behind, but that should take care of the vast majority. I had some packages left on my system, namely some open office languages, and an xorg driver.

To view your currently install packages:
# dpkg --get-selections|less

Remove any remaining packages that look graphical in nature, if you don’t know, ask on the ubuntu forums or irc support channel, i’ll take no responsibility for you hosing your install.

Once that’s done you can install openssh/lamp/bind etc.