Docker GUI App Repositories: Where to Find Docker GUI Images

August 31, 2017August 30, 2017 Christopher Tozzi docker, Docker-baseimage-gui, Docker-gui-app, Docker-gui-firefox, Dockerized-openoffice, GUI, GUI apps, repositories, x11docker

by Christopher Tozzi

Looking to run Firefox, OpenOffice or another graphical user interface (GUI) app in Docker containers? The answer may be just a GitHub repo away. Here’s a roundup of open-source repositories dedicated to helping run GUI apps in Docker.

Docker was not designed with traditional GUI apps in mind. Unless the graphical interface that your app uses is delivered through a web browser (in which case running the app with Docker is relatively easy), it is challenging to make the interface available to users.

It’s not impossible, however. Using X11 forwarding, a VNC server or a similar technique, you can export a video interface from outside a container to access a graphical interface.

Doing so is likely not practical in production. But as I’ve written before, there are potential benefits to running GUI apps with Docker, including but not limited to simplifying desktop application installation.

GitHub Repositories for Docker GUI Apps

If you’re searching for a quick and easy way to get GUI apps running in Docker containers, the following repositories can help:

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Docker-baseimage-gui. Offers several container images that are preconfigured to make it easy to run a GUI app using Docker and X11 forwarding.
x11docker: A handy tool for configuring and running GUI apps with Docker. X11docker is mainly designed to be used from the command line, but it also offers a GUI interface of its own. If you want to use Docker but really hate the command line interface (CLI), x11docker may be just what you need. The fact that the tool is designed with security in mind (an important consideration, given that X11 forwarding can be risky) is a great bonus.
Docker-gui-firefox. This repo doesn’t contain code, but it offers instructions for setting up Firefox inside a Docker container on macOS. It uses X11 forwarding to make the GUI available.
Docker-gui-app. Another repository that mostly contains instructions, but links to a Stack Overflow page with useful code. These instructions use a VNC server to set things up.
Dockerized-openoffice. As the name of this repository promises, it contains an image for a Dockerized version of OpenOffice. (Actually, it’s a complete Linux distribution with Openoffice preinstalled.) With two commands, you can have OpenOffice up and running on your Linux desktop using this image. That beats fighting with the OpenOffice installation packages (but it’s perhaps not as simple as just using your package manager to install the application).

To be sure, the number of open-source repositories dedicated to Docker GUI apps is small. Still, there is clear evidence of growing interest in Docker GUI apps. If you want to play around with a novel approach to installing and running traditional applications, these repos make it easy.