Network Manager not working when installing ubuntu-desktop on a Ubuntu 18.04 Server installation

Are you aware that Ubuntu 18.04 introduced Netplan?

If you want to use network manager my understanding is you need to edit the netplan configuration file in /etc/netplan.

Specifically to enable network manager your /etc/netplan would look like this:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

You then need to run

netplan generate
netplan apply

After that, network manager should work as you expect.


The other answer fixed my problem. I'm running VmWare workstation pro 14.1.2

This is what I did to fix "wired unmanaged" in Ubuntu Server 18.04

sudo nano /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

add under network

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

then perform:

sudo netplan generate
sudo netplan apply