I did a fresh install of ubuntu 13.04 desktop on my machine from the mini.iso to alleviate the hours it would take to download the entire version (slow internet connection).

It all installed fine, though I feel like I missed some important packages. I installed kubuntu (unity is a hassle on my desktop, can't handle it), and rebooted. It booted straight into terminal (or whatever it's called, not a GUI). I have an old nVidia Quadro 560 as my GPU so I assumed it wasn't booting the GUI because there weren't any drivers installed yet.

So I updated all my packages and headers with

sudo su

apt-get update

apt-get install linux-headers-generic

apt-get install nvidia-current-updates

nvidia-xconfig

Rebooted, still launched into 'terminal', though this time the resolution was off (origionaly was correct at 1900x1200, now it's 800x600).

Don't really know what I missed, attempted startx in super user, and it was not recognized.

Again I feel like I did not install any GUI packages, though I don't know enough about linux to know what command/repository to grab these from. Unless I do have it and don't know how to get it to load.

Thanks for any help that's given, new to linux but not a complete novice at it.

(Note: I had had ubuntu 12.10 installed on this desktop, attempted to upgrade via Upgrade manager and I think it froze during the update causing errors. Attempted to fix this with apt-get update and it caused a kernel panic, of which I did not feel like fixing so I went this route with a fresh install).