Ah, that could be; I admit I never bothered to try and remove the original DE. I kinda thought you could remove the metapackage, but I wouldn't be shocked if it

Ah, that could be; I admit I never bothered to try and remove the original DE. I kinda thought you could remove the metapackage, but I wouldn't be shocked if it left some cruft. I'm pretty sure the "not install it in the first place" path is possible, though, if less obvious; I seem to recall that the minimalist setups I've seen actually started with the server ISO and then added Xorg to it. Regardless, I'm happy to agree that Ubuntu doesn't lend itself to this use as well as some alternatives.