Also, what exactly don't you know that you would need to know to run the server without a GUI? If you already know how to SSH and start the server that way (or better idea -- create a systemd service for it (I can show you how to do that)) and you just need to launch the server without a head attached, just modify your startup script to do java -jar minecraft_whatever_server.jar nogui. If you want to run Minecraft commands from the server console while headless, you can type them directly into the terminal while the server is running. If you set up the Minecraft server with systemd, you won't have a terminal, so I'd recommend using Rcon/mcrcon instead. It's built into the vanilla server and not too tough to set up. I'll show you how if you like.

If all else fails, of course, there's always the low-tech solution: Amazon sells "HDMI dummy plugs", dongles that plug into an HDMI port and pretend there's a monitor connected. If you're anything like me, though, that solution won't satisfy you, so I'm here to help if you need help getting some combination of the above working.

[–] atocci@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

I think Pop_OS uses Gnome by default, and I haven't changed it. I suppose it wasn't really the server's GUI I needed, I juat wanted a desktop environment in general so I could start and configure the server in a familiar way. Really, the only thing I figured I needed VNC for was double-clicking the startup script and editing text files. I'm starting to understand this was a pretty inefficient way to run a server though... I think I'll give up on the VNC idea since it sounds like there are much better ways to do this. I'll look into systemd and rcon next, thanks!