How to Enable a GUI

This guide will show you how to allow programs within your container to access Wayland and/or X Window, providing a limited Graphical User Interface (GUI). Depending on your distribution and the needs of a GUI application, access to Wayland and/or X Window might not provide the level of desktop integration that you want. For full desktop integration, consider other solutions.

There are at least three options to give a container access to your host windowing system.

Option 1: By Network

On some distributions, sharing the network with the host enables access to Wayland and/or X Window. For example, by adding the following options to create-cnest (or podman create or podman run):

--network=host --uts=host --add-host=$HOSTNAME:127.0.0.1

Option 2: By Wayland

If you're not sharing the host's network, or if that approach does not work, on most distributions, you can add the following options to enable Wayland access:

--volume=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY:/tmp/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY
--env=XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp
--env=WAYLAND_DISPLAY=$WAYLAND_DISPLAY

Option 3: By X Window

All major Linux distributions have transitioned from X Window to Wayland. If you still want to use X Window, the following option should enable it on most distributions:

--volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix