How do I boot into the console and then launch the Ubuntu desktop from it?

To return to the login screen

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.

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To skip the login screen completely, boot into the console and then start the GUI, you must modify GRUB:

• sudo nano /etc/default/grub
• Change line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
• Ctrl-X, press Y and then Enter to save and exit.
• sudo update-grub
• Reboot and you should come up directly in tty1 -- no need to press Ctrl-Alt-F1.
• Login, and then startx to boot into the default desktop, or
  • unity for Unity
  • unity-2d-shell for Unity 2D
  • gnome-shell for Gnome
  • sudo service lightdm start to get the login screen (if you fix it :)

To skip the login GUI without using Ctrl+Alt+F1, simply do the following:

• sudo vi /etc/default/grub
• Press i to enter into vi edit mode.
• Change the line that reads GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
• Uncomment the line which reads #GRUB_TERMINAL=console by removing the leading #
• Press Esc to exit vi edit mode.
• Type :wq to save the change made to the /etc/default/grub file and exit vi.

• Update /boot/grub/grub.cfg to have your change apply by running sudo update-grub

  If your computer uses systemd, you must tell systemd to skip the default login GUI thus:

  sudo systemctl enable multi-user.target --force
  sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
  

• Reboot your computer: sudo reboot

Now, the login GUI will never show up.

Once you're in the terminal, run sudo systemctl start lightdm to start the default desktop.

If you want to load a new desktop from the terminal, type one of this things:

• If using Unity, type unity.

• If using Unity 2D, type unity-2d-shell.

• If using GNOME, type gnome-shell.

Or just type startx if you want to load the default desktop environment :P