Q: How do I make a Ubuntu VM that boots to Terminal but has GUI capabilities? I have to make an Ubuntu VM (Virtualbox) to run python scripts (on windows hosts) utilising GUIs like pygame, tkinter and pythonwx (especially Tkinter for my legacy apps)
Making a VM appliance with a full desktop environment takes ~3.5 GB I've found. I have to reduce this for distribution ease.
I removed all desktop managers and desktop files, which crashed my appliance (nothing to boot into). Then I set GRUB to boot to text console only, but now I have no GUI services or window managers available, of course.
Plan A:  I want to find something I can load at boottime for GUI capability, preferably a background service. What could do the job?
Plan B:  Alternatively, I could install a barebones DM and desktop system and set that to load a terminal after loading. Recommendations?

A: You can check out docker. Docker is an light weight 
http://docs.docker.io/installation/ubuntulinux/
