Rocky Linux 10 with GNOME Desktop | Support by cloudimg

Rocky Linux 10 with the GNOME desktop, over RDP

This image is Rocky Linux 10, the community enterprise operating system that is bug for bug compatible with RHEL 10, with the distribution's own desktop added: the AppStream environment group @graphical-server-environment, which Rocky calls Server with GUI. GNOME Remote Desktop is set up for remote login, so you connect with any RDP client (Windows App, Remote Desktop Connection, Remmina, FreeRDP), meet the GNOME login screen and sign in to a full desktop session on the virtual machine: Files, the Ptyxis terminal, Firefox, Text Editor, Calculator, Software and System Monitor are ready to use, and anything else installs with dnf. Rocky Linux 10 reached general availability in June 2025 and is supported to May 2035.

Secure by default: remote desktop ships off, no default password

A freshly deployed machine exposes nothing but SSH on port 22. Remote desktop is installed but switched off, no account has a password, and the RDP server cannot be enabled until you have set your own. The Cockpit web console that the stock Rocky cloud image leaves listening on port 9090 is switched off here too, so the listening surface really is port 22 alone. At first boot each machine generates its own RDP credential and its own TLS certificate, readable by root only, so nothing is shared between machines or baked into the image. SELinux stays in enforcing mode and SSH stays key only even after you set a desktop password.

Three steps to the desktop

• SSH in with your key and set your own account password
• Run sudo cloudimg-remote-desktop enable
• Open an SSH tunnel to port 3389, connect your RDP client to localhost, pass this VM's RDP credential, and log in at the GNOME login screen

Built for Azure

Networking, provisioning and updates work exactly as on Rocky Linux Server: cloud-init and the Azure Linux agent provision the machine and NetworkManager manages the network interface. The desktop session is Wayland, because RHEL 10 removed the Xorg server; Xwayland is present and runs X applications as normal. The operating system disk is 30 GiB, sized for a desktop rather than a headless server. Every available update is applied at build time and dnf-automatic is armed for security updates. Recommended size: Standard_B2ms (8 GB) or larger; the desktop renders in software, no GPU required.

What you get from cloudimg

• The GNOME desktop and GNOME Remote Desktop from the Rocky Linux AppStream repository, proven end to end on every build from the RDP client through the login screen to a working desktop
• No default password, remote desktop off by default, per-VM RDP credential and TLS certificate
• A deployment guide tested against this exact image
• 24/7 expert support from cloudimg

Licensing

Rocky Linux and GNOME are free and open source: a collection of independently licensed packages (GPL, LGPL, MIT, BSD, Apache-2.0, MPL and more). No subscription, licence key or entitlement is required. Rocky Linux is a mark of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation and GNOME a trademark of the GNOME Foundation, used here only to identify the software; cloudimg is not affiliated with either. The cloudimg charge ($0.04 per vCPU/hour) covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 support.