Can You Run Gui Applications in a Linux Docker Container

Can you run GUI applications in a Linux Docker container?

You can simply install a vncserver along with Firefox :)

I pushed an image, vnc/firefox, here: docker pull creack/firefox-vnc

The image has been made with this Dockerfile:

# Firefox over VNC
#
# VERSION               0.1
# DOCKER-VERSION        0.2

FROM    ubuntu:12.04
# Make sure the package repository is up to date
RUN     echo "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list
RUN     apt-get update

# Install vnc, xvfb in order to create a 'fake' display and firefox
RUN     apt-get install -y x11vnc xvfb firefox
RUN     mkdir ~/.vnc
# Setup a password
RUN     x11vnc -storepasswd 1234 ~/.vnc/passwd
# Autostart firefox (might not be the best way to do it, but it does the trick)
RUN     bash -c 'echo "firefox" >> /.bashrc'

This will create a Docker container running VNC with the password 1234:

For Docker version 18 or newer:

docker run -p 5900:5900 -e HOME=/ creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create

For Docker version 1.3 or newer:

docker run -p 5900 -e HOME=/ creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create

For Docker before version 1.3:

docker run -p 5900 creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create

Unable to display GUI application from Windows container : Windows 2019 Server

The short answer here is no. Windows containers don't have the underlying GUI components available, so you can't run any desktop application on Windows containers.

The longer answer is that this depends on what you're trying to achieve. The actual components for the GUI (GUI APIs) are present on the Server Core and Server image (not on the Nano Server one). However, the GUI itself is not present. What that means is you can run an application that depends on the GUI APIs, for UI test automation, for example. I blogged about this topic a while ago here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/containers/nano-server-x-server-core-x-server-which-base-image-is-the-right/ba-p/2835785

How to run GUI application from linux container in Window using Docker?

There was a similar discussion on docker issue 8710, but for MacOS:

A somewhat crude way to do this:

Start socat to expose local xquartz socket on a TCP port

socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\"

(Note: for Windows, you would need at least:

• an X11 server like Xming
• to check if socat is available for Windows
  )

Pass the display to container (assuming virtualbox host is available on 192.168.59.3):

 docker run -e DISPLAY=192.168.59.3:0 jess/geary

(This is insecure on public networks, add bind, su and range options to socat to limit access.)

Is it possible to run a docker container embedding a GUI environment on a GUI-less server and open the GUI session from a remote GUI client?

I found this docker image which solves my question : docker-x2go-xubuntu :
https://hub.docker.com/r/paimpozhil/docker-x2go-xubuntu

I built it on the GUI-less server and ran it as explained on docker hub.

On my second computer I opened an ssh tunnel to the GUIless server pointing to the docker interface :

ssh -CY -L 33333:container.docker.ip:2222 -l guilessuserlogin guiless.server.ip

(I retrieved the container IP by ifconfig on the GUIless server)

On this second computer I installed x2goclient from the regular repositories and configured a session to connect to localhost:33333

Once connected, the GUI desktop of the docker machine is completely available.

Run GUI app in linux docker on linux server on windows host

It turns out this way: i need to install these packages inside my container under root:

apt-get install libxrender1 libxtst6 libxi6

So now i have pycharm displayed and it's interacting well.

The main tip was written and described there

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