Ubuntu Server: Need to Remote desktop

[Robert Dailey]

Hi,

I've for a long time been a Windows user, but for about a month now I've
started using Ubuntu Server 8.04, which I'm finding to be quite awesome.
I've familiarized myself with the command line quite a bit, however some
things I simply can't do from the command line. For example, I need to be
able to access my router's firmware website from Firefox, and to do that I
need my server to have a GUI installed.

What I want to do first of all is have a GUI on my server I can easily start
and stop as I please. I don't want the overhead of GUI in memory if I'm not
using it. I simply want to have a GUI desktop on my Ubuntu Server when I
want to use Firefox, for example. Here is my broad overview of what I want
to do:

1) Start my Ubuntu server (When I start the machine, it should *always*
start in command-line mode, with no GUI/Desktop loaded)
2) Startup PuTTY from a windows machine, connect to my server with that,
startup the GUI from the command line somehow, and then from that point
forward be able to simply "remote desktop" into the server and access
Firefox to browse the web from my server.
3) A simpler alternative to Step #2 would be to ignore PuTTY all-together
and always be able to remote desktop into my server. However, this may
require the GUI to be enabled all the time or for it to be started as
connections come in, and stopped as connections leave. Not sure what options
I have, so #2 and #3 might be invalid all together.
4) Another solution would be to simply run Firefox from the Windows machine,
but have the software communicate with my linux server (remote) instead of
routing through my local Windows PC's desktop. I hear this is complicated,
though, or perhaps I'm yet again misunderstanding something.

I do apologize for my "Microsoftish" terminology, however I'm still not as
experienced with Linux as I'd like to be. I've used the Windows Remote
Desktop feature a lot, and I really like it because it's simple to use.
However, one disadvantage to it is the overwhelming amount of data it
streams back and forth. I just want something simple like this for my Ubuntu
server.

So far I've installed the "xubuntu-desktop" package, but I'm not sure if
this is what I need. Help is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!
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