This article will describe to you how to switch from minimal installation to GUI GNOME (Graphical User Interface) installation, which are the main options for most users in CentOS 7. Users prefer minimal installation which use remote shell commands.
What Is GUI GNOME?
GNOME is the default environment in CentOS 7 GUI, Fedora 21 and Ubuntu 17.10. It is the most used environment in the latest distribution of Linux.
Here Is How To Install GUI “GNOME Desktop” on CentOS 7
Use SSH to login to your server then execute this command
After executing the command it will start downloading requires packages, so this may take a while.
yum groupinstall 'GNOME Desktop' -y
Enable CentOS 7 GUI
Nothing will change after installing the “GNOME Desktop” packages. You must reboot because the server GUI will not automatically load. for testing the current default target execute this command:
systemctl get-default
# ------ Result ------
# multi-user.target
The above result shows that the GUI is still not enabled.
Now we will change to graphical interface
systemctl set-default graphical.target
#Removed symlink /etc/systemd/system/default.target
#Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/default.target to /usr/lib/systemd/system/graphical.target.
To check again what is the default status, run again the following command
systemctl get-default
# ------ Result ------
# graphical.target
It seems good, now you can reboot your server.
reboot
After that the GUI interface will appear asking for accepting license, under user settings you can start adding new users. change to the GUI by performing ‘systemctl isolate graphical.target’ which will move us to the GUI immediately.
systemctl isolate graphical.target
If VPS server is hosted by STS Host and Tech INC login to your client area and navigate to your VPS server and click on VNC. Or you need to have a VNC client software to connect to your server.
To Remove CentOS 7 GUI
yum groupremove "GNOME Desktop"