I have set up a number of server based on the past four or five versions of Ubuntu Server. Every time I face the dialog where one can pick what additional software to install, I just select OpenSSH so that I can make the server headless and manage it remotely. I then install each individual package using apt-get until the system works as I wish.
First, I thought that the alternatives for software could be installed as meta packages using apt-get but I never managed to find any such meta packages in the package list on http://packages.ubuntu.com – or by searching the repositories with apt-cache.
I just now learned that the command tasksel brings up a menu similar (but extended) to the one shown during the installation. It is also possible to list which deb packages an individual task would install. A simple method would for instance be to run ‘tasksel install dns-server’ which would lead to the exact same result as if one had picked the DNS server from the beginning.
