I installed a CentOS 6.3 server on virtualbox. It has no windows, or GUI installed.
Now I wanted to add a GUI to my server, but I could not find easy documentation showing how to add a GUI, or Gnome in this case, to a CentOS 6 server installation.
There are a lot of results of how to do this, but things have been renamed in CentOS 6, so that made it more difficult to figure out. Also, there are “Short Names” and I am assuming they are called “Long Names” associated with a yum groupinstall, which added to my confusion.
To add Gnome/GUI to a minimal CentOS 6 install run (short name version):

yum groupinstall basic-desktop desktop-platform x11 fonts

And the “long name” version:

yum groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "X Window System" "Fonts"


Just put here for my own reference or if you come here for it.
One more thing. To start Windows from text mode. Enter

startx

to start it.

David Yin

David is a blogger, geek, and web developer — founder of FreeInOutBoard.com. If you like his post, you can say thank you here

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