Access GUI environment of Centos and Ubuntu

They only have a GUI environment if you created your droplet with a distribution that supports it (i.e. a “desktop” distribution, which I do not see as one of the options for CentOS). If you did that, you would be able to access it through the console – the “Access” icon on your droplet’s page in the control panel – or, probably requiring some extra work on your part, using VNC.

You’re in luck! There’s a tutorial on this very site that tells you how: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-setup-vnc-for-ubuntu-12 <br> <br>However, you should know a couple things. First of all, having graphics on your server is just another potential attack vector for hackers. It’s not a guaranteed future problem, but it’s something you should try to avoid doing in a production environment. <br> <br>Second of all, I know that the command line seems overwhelming and hard to learn. That’s because, well, the command line actually IS overwhelming and hard to learn. But, once you’ve properly learned it, you’re going to see why servers don’t come with GUIs. Every time you learn something new about one of the core command line utilities (like sed or grep), you’re learning a new power that you can use in system administration. When you’re using personal servers, try and force yourself to use the commandline as much as possible when you’re solving problems. Once you get your head around it, you’ll be amazed how much you can get done. <br> <br>–Matt

Wow i totally lost this thread, but thanks very much for the replies, and specially to you and your points Matt! I really appreciate it.

I have been trying to get my head around it since posting… and im still stuck w/ a lot of questions and having a hard time keeping track of all my posts on stack, here, etc… it’s really giving me a hard time. To date, I’ve still not moved my apps from my shared hosting to digital ocean because of this :( it’s such a pain and I dont have much time to tinker.

I just really needed to get my LAMP + FTP + mail + ioncube, etc setup the way i need it so i can get back to what i do best, Applications Development.

So far this is proving to not be my cup of tea :(

PS I’ve managed and deployed tons of Servers using WAMP and i have no problem w/ that at all. but w/ Digital Ocean, everything’s just alien to me and it’s costing me so much time. Perhaps some other time when i have more time to sit thru this for days - i dont mind