Install Babun

Cygwin is a great tool, but not the easiest to install. Babun consists of a pre-configured Cygwin that does not interfere with existing Cygwin installation.

Download the dist file from http://babun.github.io, unzip it and run the install.bat script. After a few minutes the application will be installed to the %USERPROFILE%\.babun directory. You can use the /target (or /t) option to install babun to a custom directory.

Install Cygwin/X

Run pact from babun shell (pact is a babun package manager )

pact install xorg-server xinit xhost

Start the X server

Once the installation has completed, open a Cygwin terminal and run XWin :0 -listen tcp -multiwindow. This will start an X server on Windows machine with the ability to listen to connections from the network (-listen tcp) and display each application in its own window (-multiwindow), rather than a single window acting as a virtual screen to display applications on. Once it’s started, you should see an „X” icon in Windows tray area.

Run graphical application

fr3nd/xeyes is a good test to run

// don't forget to change WINDOWS_MACHINE_IP_ADDR!
// 'localhost' obviously won't work from within Docker container
docker run -e DISPLAY=$WINDOWS_MACHINE_IP_ADDR:0 --rm fr3nd/xeyes

Or we can build ourselves image with Firefox using the following Dockerfile as a starting point

FROM centos
 
RUN yum -y update && yum install -y firefox
 
CMD /usr/bin/firefox

docker build -t firefox . it and run the container with

export DISPLAY=$WINDOWS_MACHINE_IP_ADD:0
docker run -ti --rm -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY firefox

If all goes well you should see Firefox running from within a Docker container.

Troubleshooting

If you have issues with authorization you may want to try running the insecure xhost + command to permit access from all machines. See xhost(1) Linux man page.

Alternatives

There are a few different options to run GUI applications inside a Docker container like using SSH with X11 forwarding or VNC.