Problem
You finished installing CentOS7 and its minimal and drops you at the console prompt but no desktop.
Solution
Ensure your OS is networked (see here) and all updates run
Install GNOME desktop
yum -y groups install “GNOME Desktop”
When complete use the following command to run it
startx
Once you log in you will have to answer a few questions to configure the desktop
One of the challenges is that startx would have to be run after every reboot, /etc/inittab is deprecated but systemd uses ‘targets’ instead of runlevels. Run the following command to enable the GUI on system start.
ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/runlevel5.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target
Reboot and note that the desktop starts automatically
Tested Platform
CentOS7
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