Can Gnome-Desktop be Run from within an Ubuntu 18.04 LXC Container?

[Lonnie]

Using Proxmox, I want to do some testing on an Ubuntu 18.04 server with the GNOME desktop installed.

Can a LXC container handle a Desktop being installed, or must I use KVM?

In my test so far, I've installed the desktop on top of Ubuntu 18.04 server using this one command:
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

With KVM, after rebooting, the virtual machine makes it all the way to a GUI login prompt and I'm able to log into the GNOME desktop.

With LXC, after rebooting, it never makes it to GUI.

Is this simply not possible with Proxmox LXC, or are there settings I can apply to make it work?

 

[Alwin]

Can a LXC container handle a Desktop being installed, or must I use KVM?

It's possible, but easier with KVM.

Is this simply not possible with Proxmox LXC, or are there settings I can apply to make it work?

This applies in general to container, as they do not have their own display port.

 

[Lonnie]

Interesting.

I notice the Proxmox GUI for KVM has a "Hardware" tab with a sub-option "Display":



Promox GUI for LXC has (instead) a "Resources" tab with no sub-option for display:



I assume Proxmox GUI cannot give "Display" to LXC unless the LXC technology already inherently possesses display technology.

I can see some utility for LXC offering "Display" configuration, but for now, Proxmox KVM will serve my needs. Thank you.

 

[LnxBil]

I assume Proxmox GUI cannot give "Display" to LXC unless the LXC technology already inherently possesses display technology.

I can see some utility for LXC offering "Display" configuration, but for now, Proxmox KVM will serve my needs. Thank you.

LX(C) containers do not have any hardware attached to them and it also does not make much sense. It depends what you want, but if you want to access the desktop from another system, just use x2go for that. It works flawlessly in a container and there are clients for all major operating systems and it works very well. There are tons of tutorials out there for getting what you want and they heavily depend on the used guest container distribution.