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I need to use Docker / Windows containers on Windows 2016 Server and prepare it Windows applications to run on it. Configuring Windows via Powershell just is not as convenient though as it is on Ubuntu, especially if you never worked with Windows Server really and need to learn all the Powershell commands ;)
Is there a way to access a Windows Container via GUI?
It's possible with Docker, Ubuntu, VNC: Can you run GUI apps in a docker container?
Wondering if anything similar can be done for Windows Containers?
(I am working on-premise, not using Azure. Found a similar but unanswered question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32721422/windows-server-containers-azure-how-to-create-a-container-with-gui)
Thanks.
== Update ==
RDP is definitely not an option as per February 2016 - not sure if they plan to support it in the final release?!
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/about/work_in_progress#remote-desktop
Remote Desktop
Windows Containers cannot be managed/interacted with through a RDP session in TP4.
So far I managed to have at least a decent file explorer by using Midnight Commander, but still command line on Windows is not much fun.
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The short answer here is no. Windows containers don't have the underlying GUI components available, so you can't run any desktop application on Windows containers.
There are two editions of Docker: Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) and Docker Desktop, which is also known as the Community Edition (CE). Docker Enterprise Edition is supported for use with Enterprise Server only on Windows Server 2016 so if you are using Windows 10 you must install Docker Desktop.
in this video MS-container-developer Taylor Brown says that they break up with RDP from TP3 to TP4 and will very probably do not support RDP in RTM Version Server 2016:
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechNetVirtualConference/TechNetVC2016/Day-3-Containers-Session-with-QA
Update as of Dez. 2018:
Server 2019 is out and RDP is still not possible / supported for all container images. (of course it does not make any sense for nano images)
check this nice intro to what has changed: https://stefanscherer.github.io/docker-on-windows-server-2019/
to have a somewhat complete overview, it should be mentioned that there are some hacks out in the wild, that may RDP make work in some images and setups, e.g.: https://withinrafael.com/2018/03/09/using-remote-desktop-services-in-containers/
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