Hello Y’all, Im trying to help my dad get his handme down server set up for training useage and he wants to configure it and get some sort of GUI for it and set up Vitual Machines possibly, but this is mainly for simulating networks for Cyber Security training. So this server will never be connected to the internet cause apparently the School wont let him do VLANs, and it is also going to be “hacked” as part of training so yeah its kinda nutered lol. Even Ubuntus website says to download a GUI from the sudo apt install method which requires internet lol. So I’m not sure how to go about doing this. Would any of yall please kindly offer me some advice? 
thanks.
So i found out that Ubuntu makes a “Desktop” version of 22.04 LTS. Im assuming that would work fine for our needs if we used another computer to download it to a usb drive or something?
Edit: sure, desktop would be fine. More apps may be in “snaps” so a little… Different to compromise than bare metal programs…
Too Long Didn't Reeeee
I was pretty sure even the server “full” version, has gnome as an option in the nCurses install menu? Near the end, when you select services like apache/ssh/samba etc?
Otherwise, can just use “normal” ubuntu
Is it air gapped simply to be safe, so any infections won’t spread?in which case, you could start an install with a software network card, install everything, stop the VM, and remove the network card, and make a template/clone, and play with the clone?
Then when it’s broken/exploited, destroy the clone and re-spin from template/snapshot/backup?
You’d probably also want a virtual hard disk, that you can copy malware to, then join the vhd to the VM, as a source of inffmection for the VM? Rather than downloading the malware onto the VM before cutting it’s network stack away?
Hmm so this came pre set up with the Ubuntu already on it so we have no ide what the heck is actually configured as far as the base OS is concerned. We are probably just gonna take it home and re image it from scratch with a desktop version of Ubuntu connected to our home internet since the school will not let dad use it on the school network cause reasons. Its BS I know. I think eventually dad wants it to possibly run VMs but he said he mainly wants it to be used to help students learn how to set up network switches and stuff like that.
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