🐧 Cloud Linux GUI — Full Linux Desktop in Your Browser

Spin up a full Linux graphical desktop — accessible from any browser, anywhere — with a single command.

✨ Features

• 🖥️ Full desktop experience — XFCE desktop inside your browser, no VNC client needed
• ⚡ One-command setup — install and run in under 2 minutes
• 🔒 No open ports — Cloudflare Tunnel handles the exposure securely
• 📱 Works on everything — desktop, tablet, phone, old browsers
• 💪 Real Linux — full apt/dpkg packages, run GUI apps natively
• 🧩 Lightweight — works on a $5/month VPS with 1GB RAM

🚀 Quick Start

# One-line install
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unn-known1/cloud-linux-gui/main/install.sh)"

# Or step by step
git clone https://github.com/unn-known1/cloud-linux-gui.git
cd cloud-linux-gui
chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh

The installer starts the desktop, a noVNC web client, and a free quick Cloudflare Tunnel automatically — it prints your *.trycloudflare.com URL when done (also saved to /opt/tunnel_url.txt).

Options

sudo bash install.sh [OPTIONS]

    --resolution WxH     Desktop resolution (default: 1366x768)
    --port N             VNC port, 5901-5999 (default: 5901)
    --desktop NAME       Desktop environment: xfce | mate (default: xfce)
    --password PASS      Set a specific VNC password (first 8 chars are used)
    --new-password       Generate a new password even if one exists
    --no-tunnel          Skip the Cloudflare quick tunnel

Re-running the installer reuses your existing VNC password unless you pass --new-password or --password.

Managing services

On systemd systems everything runs as cloud-gui-* services — auto-start on boot, restart on failure. On non-systemd environments it falls back to nohup.

sudo /opt/cloud-linux-gui/status.sh            # live status of every service
sudo /opt/cloud-linux-gui/stop.sh              # stop everything
sudo systemctl start cloud-gui-*               # start again (systemd mode)
sudo systemctl disable --now cloud-gui-*       # disable autostart

For a stable custom domain you can optionally run a named tunnel instead of the quick tunnel:

cloudflared tunnel create linux-gui
cloudflared tunnel route dns linux-gui gui.yourdomain.com
cloudflared tunnel run linux-gui

Uninstall

sudo bash uninstall.sh                     # stop services, remove program files
sudo bash uninstall.sh --purge             # also remove VNC passwords & config
sudo bash uninstall.sh --remove-packages   # also apt-purge desktop/VNC packages

🔒 Security Notes

• The VNC password is the only thing protecting your desktop. RFB authentication keys are 8 characters — servers enforce this limit, so longer passwords are silently truncated.
• Quick tunnels (*.trycloudflare.com) are public URLs. Servers throttle repeated failed auth attempts (TigerVNC blacklists hosts after 5 failures), but for real protection put Cloudflare Access (Zero Trust) in front of a named tunnel so only authenticated users reach the VNC endpoint at all.
• The password API on port 6081 binds to localhost only.
• cloudflared is downloaded from a pinned release and verified with SHA256.

🏗️ Stack

• Desktop: XFCE or MATE on Xvfb, mirrored by x11vnc (TigerVNC fallback)
• Web access: noVNC + websockify
• Tunnel: Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared)
• Services: systemd units (nohup fallback)

💡 Use Cases

• Run GUI apps on a remote server without SSH X-forwarding
• Access your Linux desktop from a locked-down corporate network
• Browser-only device (Chromebook, iPad) accessing a full Linux machine
• Quick Linux desktop for testing without a VM

⭐ If this helped you, star the repo!

MIT License — built with 💻 by Gaurang Patel