How to Install Gnome and xRDP on RHEL 8 (CentOS 8/Alma Linux/Rocky Linux)
You can install Gnome Desktop + xdrp on a remote server (VPS/cloud or dedicated) and use it as a remote desktop for browsing or running applications. This instruction works for any RHEL 8 based distributions like CentOS 8, Alma Linux 8, Rocky Linux 8, and Oracle Linux 8.
Install Gnome Desktop with
dnf groupinstall -y --nobest Workstation
After installing, reboot the server
reboot
xrdp package is provided by epel repository, so let’s enable it with
dnf install -y epel-release
install xrdp
dnf install -y xrdp xrdp-selinux xorgxrdp
Enable and start xrdp
systemctl enable xrdp systemctl start xrdp
Open port 3389 in the firewall
firewall-cmd --add-port=3389/tcp --permanent firewall-cmd --reload
Create a user and set a password for the user. This user will be used to login to remote desktop
useradd -m --shell /bin/bash serverok usermod -aG wheel serverok passwd serverok
Now you should be able to login to remote desktop using RDP.
Once logged in, you may need to disable desktop animations to avoid lag by running the following command in the terminal.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false