This guide enables desktop mode in Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) running off an AWS EC2.
- Launch an EC2 instance with Ubuntu 16.04 (should work on all versions greater too)
- Ensure a security group is configured, that allows ingress on ports 22 (SSH) and 5901 (VNC, 5900+N, where N is the display number)
- SSH into the instance, update the system, install the XFCE desktop and the lightweight VNC server: