On Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 05:48:24PM +0000, Russell L. Harris wrote: > P.P.S. Typing "startx" at the CLI returns an error message, something > like "xserver not available"...
Why be imprecise like this? Why not type out the exact error message? Anyway, it *maybe* sounds like X isn't installed. I would try "apt-get install xorg". If that actually installs a bunch of stuff, then the guess was correct. And, if X isn't installed, then it's possible that your chosen desktop environment isn't installed either. So you might need to install that as well.
