I use DigitalOcean for a majority of my testing and from time to time I need a desktop environment to run some of my tools (like burp). After spending much more time than I want to admit I have it down to these 10 commands to bring a Ubuntu + Mate + XRDP desktop to a Ubuntu Droplet :
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop -y
sudo apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment mate-notification-daemon xrdp -y
adduser burp
usermod -aG admin burp
usermod -aG sudo burp
su - burp
echo mate-session> ~/.xsession
sudo cp /home/burp/.xsession /etc/skel
sudo service xrdp restart
From there you can use any RDP viewer to connect to your droplet: 
Ubuntu Remote Desktop On Digital Ocean
