I wanted to use any lightweight version of Linux. I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10. After installation I see only a command line no GUI?

Did you try reinstalling it again? It could be due to your video card. If the steps already suggested by the other experts don't work, try to install it again or to install a newer version that could run on your PC ( I don't know what hardware you have, but you can check online for a distro compatible with your computer: http://lifehacker.com/5889950/how-to-find-the-perfect-linux-distribution-for-you).

Quora is not a place for specific technical questions/problems. Try http://askubuntu.com/. Also, if you really need a lightweight Linux AND you are willing to get your hands dirty, you should try https://www.archlinux.org.

Ubuntu is not lightweight Try "Lubuntu" it's a much snappier and less bloated version of Ubuntu. Not too sure about your GUI issue, could be a compatibility thing with your video card drivers. You can try pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + alt + F8 I think it was F8, but try F9 or 10 as well One of those might help.

Thanks for the A2A. I see a lot of issues with this question of yours. Firstly, you should use http://askubuntu.com/ or https://unix.stackexchange.com/ for such specific questions. More people with the necessary expertise and a willingness to help lurk around on those sites. Another issue I see is the version of the Operating System you are trying to install. Ubuntu 10.10 was released in October, 2010. That's almost 4 years old and in those 4 years a lot has changed, especially in the linux kernel. You should no longer try to use such an old version of Ubuntu. Next, you ask for a lightweight linux distribution and then try to use the heaviest I've ever seen. Ubuntu by no means is a lightweight distro. For a lightweight distro, I'd recomment something along the lines of Linux Mint, Xubuntu, or my favourite, Arch Linux and its derivaties. I use Arch Linux on my 6 year old laptop and it gives me amazing performance. Now to try and debug your current problem first. You say you tried to run startx but it didn't help. Please state exactly what you mean by, "it didn't work". What happened? What did you see on the screen? Were there any errors? Share the complete output you get by running startx. Unless you provide more information, it is very difficult for anyone to help you. There's the possibility that you installed the server version of Ubuntu by mistake which does not come preinstalled with X11. Another possible reason for X server not running is Video Card support. That is often a major issue, especially with old versions of distros since they do not ship with the required drivers. There's other possibilities too. Too man to enumerate here. You should explain your problem further and provide more details before this can be taken forward.

Where in 2014 did you find Ubuntu from 2010 on a serious note what version of the OS are we using, check using "uname -a" without quotes If it is the server version we would have to install GUI after installing the system and it is not lightweight but a heavyweight system made for running servers like web servers, file servers etc and contains many utilities that we would not use and do not need. To install a GUI on the server use "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" and we must be good to go.(Note that you need a good working internet connection for this To test it try "ping -c3 www.google.com" if the reply is something similar to "host not found" net is not working) If it is not the server version there might be a driver problem and you are in for a very hard time which might be because the computer has older hardware and this might be the first reason for installing a lightweight system so we would have to hunt the drivers. A better solution in this case would be to try out some alternate OS: I'd prefer arch based distributions instead of ArchLinux if it is the first time, for such a thing the following would help: http://antergos.com/try-it/ http://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/ Get the open box one http://sourceforge.net/projects/archbang/files/ If you would prefer debian  base: http://crunchbang.org/download/ else do try: http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm If you want a fully functioning system with all codecs and drivers do try to get an older version of: http://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php If nothing else fails try the forums and do mention the the error output that you recieve on the system.

Lightweight Linux Distributions: There is a list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution Command Line and GUI Issue: Use "startx" command without quotes and you should be able to enter in GUI mode. You may also give a try "init 5".

I've never tried Ubuntu 10.10 so have no idea but it's really old. If you have an old computer you should try lubuntu 12.10 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/PreviousReleases Or if even this feels slow the best option would be to use windows xp . Hope this helps :)

Run the following command sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop sudo apt-get install lxde then reboot