Introduction:
Docker is a powerful tool that allows you to run isolated environments called “containers” on a host computer. This can be useful for testing, development, or simply running applications in a lightweight and isolated environment. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to run Arch Linux with KDE and noVNC in a Docker container, allowing you to access the desktop remotely via a browser.
Assumptions:
Before you begin, you will need the following:
A computer with Docker installed A copy of the Arch Linux installation image (download it from the official site)
Step 1: Download the Arch Linux base image from Docker Hub
First, we download the Arch Linux base image from Docker Hub:
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docker pull archlinux
Step 2: Run the Arch Linux image in a new container
Next, we run the Arch Linux image in a new container and expose the necessary ports for noVNC:
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docker run --name my-arch -p 6080:80 -p 5900:5900 -d archlinux
This will start the container in the background and show port 80 for noVNC and port 5900 for the VNC server.
Step 3: Connect to the container and install the required packages
Now we will connect to the container and install the necessary packages for KDE and noVNC:
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docker exec -it my-arch /bin/bash
pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit plasma-desktop tightvnc novnc
Step 4: Create a VNC password and start the VNC server
Next, we create a VNC password and start the VNC server:
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vncpasswd
vncserver
Step 5: Start the noVNC server
Finally, we start the noVNC server:
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/usr/share/novnc/utils/launch.sh --vnc localhost:5900 --listen 80
Step 6: Access the desktop environment via noVNC
You can now open a web browser on your host machine and navigate to “http://localhost:6080” to access the KDE desktop environment via noVNC.
Conclusion:
In this tutorial, we showed you how to run Arch Linux with KDE and noVNC in a Docker container. This allows you to remotely access the desktop environment through a web browser, making it easier to test or develop applications in an isolated environment. Note that running Arch Linux in a Docker container is different from running it natively on the host system, and you may need to take additional steps to customize the container to suit your needs.