How To: RDP, WinSCP/PuTTYI know people love running a Linux from command line, but it just seems so much easier for anybody trying to get their first website going to have the familiarity of a GUI. In the following tutorial, I will show you how to install a GUI on a CentOS 7 server that does not currently have a GUI installed.

In previous tutorials we covered:

• How To: Create CentOS 7 VM on ESXi
• How To: Enable RDP using WinSCP & PuTTY
• How To: Configure Web Server

In this tutorial we will install the Gnome Desktop on a CentOS 7 Server that is only command line.

Prev

1of9

Next

• First we log in as root

yum group list

• We see several options here, but the 2 we are looking for are: GNOME Desktop & Graphical Administration Tools

yum group install “GNOME Desktop” “Graphical Administration Tools”

…. yum group install -y “GNOME Desktop” “Graphical Administration Tools” will automatically answer yes to any question during the installation

• The following command will set the default runlevel to the GUI

ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/runlevel5.target/etc/systemd/system/default.target

reboot

After the reboot you will complete the installation.

Prev

1of14

Next

• Accept the license
• Click Finish Configuration
• Click Next on the Welcome Screen
• Click Next on you Keyboard Layout
• Enable/Disable location services, click Next
• Choose Time Zone, click Next
• Connect your online account OR click Skip
• Create account / username, click Next
• Create password, click Next
• Click Start using CentOS Linux