Running a GUI application with docker

Objective :

• Launch a GUI supported container on docker
• Run any GUI software on the container

Approach:

Before launching a GUI supported container make sure docker is enabled on your OS and then proceed to pull an image of OS.

Pulling an image of OS

Launching a GUI supported container on docker :

Mounting Xserver of base OS to docker

Xserver here is used to communicate with clients like xterm, firefox, etc via a reliable stream of bytes. Accordingly set your environment variables and configure DISPLAY server :

set-variable -name DISPLAY -value <your_ip_address>

or you could use the following command to launch the GUI supported container instead :

docker run -it — name <container_name> — net=host — env="DISPLAY" — volume="HOME/.Xauthority:/root/.Xauthority:rw" centos:<version>

Installing relevant dependencies within the container:

If you already have these installed, there is no need to install them again within the same container.

yum install python3

yum install firefox

pip3 install jupyter

Running a GUI application from inside a docker container :

To open Firefox:

firefox

To launch Jupyter notebook:

jupyter notebook --allow -root

Hence, in this way you can launch any GUI application from inside a docker container.