Docker Alternative to Virtual Machines for Transient Environments That Require GUI's

A Fedora based Docker image with Xfce4 and NoMachine which allows for local Virtual Machine equivalent graphical performance (as opposed to X11, VNC and RDP), accessing the desktop environment.

Also featured on https://dev.to/cmanique/docker-as-an-alternative-to-virtual-machines-for-transient-environments-that-require-a-gui-24la

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DISCLAIMER: so far this has been tested on Windows 10 64bit host, which is the platform that lacks the most in terms of graphical connectivity to remote environments other than native remote desktop connections, or virtual machines working in seamless mode, that come at a great cost of storage space, and don't have the modular capabilities of docker.

I do have reasons to believe that if a display is already running on the host (ie: Linux, Mac), maybe NoMachine will show it instead. Needs investigation. I did test on headless remote Linux and it works just as fine (just slower due to network latency)

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How use

a) Build the image from this repository

$ git clone https://github.com/cmanique/docker-fedora-xfce-nomachine.git
$ cd docker-fedora-xfce-nomachine
docker build -t fedora-xfce-nomachine .

b) Directly from Docker Hub

$ docker pull cmanique/fedora-xfce-nomachine

Start a container

$ docker run --cap-add=SYS_PTRACE -d -p 4000:4000 --name fedora-xfce-nomachine cmanique/fedora-xfce-nomachine

note the container needs to be run as a daemon (unless you want it to run privileged, and it's pointless because of the entrypoint)

Bash into the container with docker exec

$ docker exec -it fedora-xfce-nomachine bash

Start the NoMachine server

$ /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --startup

NX> 111 New connections to NoMachine server are enabled.
NX> 161 Enabled service: nxserver.
NX> 162 WARNING: Cannot find X servers running on this machine.
NX> 162 WARNING: A new virtual display will be created on demand.
NX> 161 Enabled service: nxd.

Download NoMachine

Open https://www.nomachine.com/download on your browser and download the appropriate installer (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Install NoMachine on your Docker host

Follow the instructions at https://www.nomachine.com/DT02O00124 in order to correctly install the software on your computer

Start the NoMachine Client and Create a New Connection

Choose NX as protocol and click Continue

Ensure the default values are appropriate and click Continue

Ensure authentication is set to Password and click Continue

Ensure Don't use a proxy is selected and click Continue

Name your connection accordingly and click Done

Double-click the newly created connection

Enter the Username and Password, optionally save the credentials and click OK

for the time being the credentials are hard-coded on the Dockerfile as nomachine/nomachine

Tick Always create a new display on this server and click Yes

Tick Mute audio on the server while I'm connected, Don't show this message again for this connection, select the second icon on the bottom row in order to resize the remote display to your window and click OK

Enjoy your Fedora Xfce Desktop

this case shows Red Hat CodeReady Studio, which was also installed through Docker, by having an image extending this one

Stop the container

$ docker stop fedora-xfce-nomachine