dryliketoast

Written by Thanos Apostolou
http://askubuntu.com/questions/53822/how-do-you-run-ubuntu-server-with-a-gui

Some more info can be found here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ServerGUI. I assume you start with a clean install of Ubuntu Server 16.04 (some modifications may be needed for older versions of Ubuntu). Depending on your needs you can do these:

Minimal GUI:

sudo apt install xorg
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends openbox
Run the command startx and openbox will start (you can open a terminal there and run any application you want)