We've come so far and stayed the same

I find it cool that I am able to connect to this machine remotely. I have no idea where it physically exists. Yet I can carve it up into virtual machines. Which, for all purposes, act like separate machines. All of this is very future-riffic and neat. Yet, when I install Linux on the virtual machine I am forced to interact with it in a very ugly and ancient way. Until I get the machine up enough for it to switch to a graphical install...