We are a relatively small shop with a mix of servers. Mostly we are a windows shop and just for an experiment a couple of years ago I installed one of my hyper-v servers as a server core install. My thinking was to see how it performed and see what my administration issues might be. Well I quickly discovered I couldn't install my backup software when the server was in server core, so that along with just finding it exceedingly faster to administer the server using the GUI I went back to a full blown install. I didn't see any noticeable performance gain from not having the gui...I wish Microsoft could take the same path that Linux has where the GUI is just another program that runs. With Linux for years you have been able to put the server into another run level and only fire up the GUI when really needed then shut it down again when not. Or as previous posters have said use an X Windows type approach where the server is on my computer...I have to agree that I would not enjoy going back to a command line interface.