I have Ubuntu as a VM, and I just installed Lubuntu
sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop
and now I can boot into this Desktop Enviroment. But, my question is... is this really Lubuntu? Should I just download and install Lubuntu? I want the lightest version possible.
To keep your distribution in a VM light we should not install the lubuntu-desktop in addition to Ubuntu/Unity:
So no, you can easily run the Lubuntu desktop on top of Ubuntu/Unity but this will not be the same lean installation you will have after installing Lubuntu.
Part of what makes Lubuntu so lightweight is the fact that it uses Openbox as its window manager instead of Compiz which is used by Unity. To ensure you have the lightest weight possible (and therefore Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu + LXDE), you need to install Openbox. It may be installed automatically when you installed lubuntu-desktop. If not, you can install it with:
sudo apt-get install openbox obconfig
If it's already installed then running that command will tell you it is already installed.
If you want it to be even more lightweight at the expense of beauty and features, you can run Openbox by itself (without LXDE):
From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Openbox:
Edit your ~/.xinitrc file and add this line to trigger Openbox when X starts.
exec openbox-session
This page will help you with installing/configuring/using Openbox.
Yes, if you install the lubuntu-desktop package, you have lubuntu with the apps of unity ubuntu installed, as well.
once you install the lubuntu-desktop if you don't want ubuntu unity look here:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purelubuntu
it was written for 12.10, it may have some issues with 13.04
