How to: Remove Ubuntu-desktop from Ubuntu server 12.04

Ok, so i did a silly thing of installing ubuntu-desktop on Ubuntu server just because i needed a browser to submit POST data  (because i can’t figure out how to use wget well enough)… anyhow long story short: Now i want to remove the damned GUI coz it’s served it’s purposes and now is unnecessarily consuming resources.

The commands that sorted this out were (… they worked for me, but i can’t guarantee that they’ll necessarily work for you – use them at your own peril):

sudo apt-get install tasksel
sudo tasksel remove ubuntu-desktop 
sudo apt-get --purge remove lightdm
sudo apt-get autoremove 
sudo reboot

… and hey presto … i’m back into the beautiful Ubuntu server command line interface (CLI)

I don’t believe it actually removes all the extra stuff that came with Ubuntu-Desktop, but for now, the machine is a little more snappy outside the world of GUI.