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My sysadmin created an Ubuntu Desktop VM for me to use as a MySQL database server. I am anticipating light use; approx. 10 DB connections max at any given time. We have no plans to ever need the desktop features.

Was this a bad idea? Are the unused "Desktop features" going to eat up much of the overall processing capability of this server?

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  • Is this for production or development purposes? Oct 6, 2014 at 14:39

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There's nothing fundamental about a desktop installation of Linux (unlike other operating systems) - you can "convert" one to the other by installing/removing packages and enabling/disabling services. For example, if you want to make sure to avoid any resource-intensive graphical logins it may be enough to remove the ubuntu-desktop package and any Unity packages. You may also want to remove X and graphics drivers. Then check service --status-all to see if any useless services are still running.

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  • At least in earlier versions in Ubuntu one more difference was kernel, that was more optimized towards servers and had a longer support for lts releases. Not sure, if thats true now. And of course it was possible to install server kernel to desktop, but there might be other subtle details, that are more optimized towards server work. Oct 3, 2014 at 10:12
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Desktop services will not consume too much resources, but most important issue here is security as having more running services increases security risks.

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    @Koen van der Rijt: Rebooting into runlevel 3 will not help, since Ubuntu uses different runlevel scheme. The right way is to disable gdm/lightdm from starting on runlevel 2. See argollo.com/paralleluniverse/?p=69 for details. Oct 2, 2014 at 14:18
  • I do not think that security suffers in case if the installed desktop services do not listen to the network interfaces. Oct 2, 2014 at 14:21
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    The last 10 desktop I've seen consumed much more resources as the last 10 servers, although the last 10 servers had much more as the last 10 desktop.
    – peterh
    Oct 2, 2014 at 16:23
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    Please define "too much". A mid range database server has 64gb memroy in this millenium - even half a gig and some CPU will not make any realistic difference. Only when you talk "low end server, better to run as a VM".
    – TomTom
    Oct 6, 2014 at 14:55
  • "Too much" means when when freeing those resources makes a difference for your application. Oct 8, 2014 at 7:16
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Is not very efficient compared with installing Ubuntu server in minimal for VM mode, but will run, specially for that workload. The good news is that as it was sized for a desktop, you can uninstall all the unneeded packages (starting with all X related ones) and use all that freed memory for mysql.

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