Starting a GUI with Vagrant

So far, we've seen how to start Vagrant using virtual machines that run in a mode that is not running a graphical interface, which is most often referred to as server or headless mode. There are also cases where virtual machines that host a graphical environment must be shared (from experimentation or development of GUI software to sharing entire development environments).

The key to start a GUI with Vagrant is to use (or create) a box that has a windowing environment installed. In some cases, you can create an environment from scratch; in this case, we'll find a box with a windowing environment installed from the Vagrant Cloud.

Getting ready

Before we can start a machine and configure it for use with a graphical user interface, we will need to find a box that has the graphics libraries installed and active. These boxes can be somewhat large due to the extra software required by GUI environments, so there are typically not many of them published to public repositories...