At the Ubuntu login page I have to hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to be able to login as an user using the command line.
But how do I get to the command line first and then start the Ubuntu desktop from it?
Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to the login screen. You can exit your terminal session on tty1 by typing exit before you do that.
Doing startx -- :1 will start another X session under terminal tty1, logging you in directly (use :2, etc. for even more displays). Note that logging into multiple sessions as the same user is not recommended and could lead to system instability.
To skip the login screen completely, boot into the console and then start the GUI, you must modify GRUB:
sudo nano /etc/default/grubGRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"sudo update-grubstartx to boot into the default desktop, orunity for Unityunity-2d-shell for Unity 2Dgnome-shell for Gnomesudo service lightdm start to get the login screen (if you fix it :)
