Which EC2 official AMI provides Freely available GUI Operating System to install GUI based app such as AWS SCT and other legacy app that runs wizard?

Question

Which EC2 AMI provides Freely available GUI Operating System? I want to Install one software that has installation wizard - any linux based AMI with GUI is preferable.

Examples of GUI based installers
1. AWS SCT
2. IBM Maximo EAM
3. PgAdmin
4. DBeaver
5. Azure DataStudio

Accepted Answer

Hi Wilson,

There are no official images available for Linux that contains a GUI, however, you can get an GUI with the following options
1. Provision an EC2 instance from a base Linux image (Ex: ubuntu) then install a GUI (Ex: lxde, gnome) and configure a service like VNC to connect to the instance. This will require a fair bit of configuration to get it working.
2. Use an image from AWS marketplace with a GUI and provision your EC2 instance. This would be the simplest option (GUI images -> [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results?searchTerms=GUI](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/search/results?searchTerms=GUI))
3. Utilize AWS Workspaces, this allows users to provision cloud-based Windows, Amazon Linux, or Ubuntu Linux desktop environments -> [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/latest/adminguide/amazon-workspaces.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/latest/adminguide/amazon-workspaces.html)

Answer

It is generally recommended to avoid installing a GUI. Linux servers are commonly managed through SSH and command-line interfaces, which provide more control, security, and efficient resource usage.
If your use case demands it you could check out the marketplace for gui AMIs e.g https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-gfwokwmdnbtn6#pdp-pricing

Which EC2 official AMI provides Freely available GUI Operating System to install GUI based app such as AWS SCT and other legacy app that runs wizard?

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