Installing GNOME on CentOS (WALinuxAgent conflict)

Many users want to install a desktop environment such as GNOME on CentOS VMs running on Azure, which they can then connect to using remote display utilities such as VNC or FreeNX.  Unfortunately, installing the GNOME desktop packages also requires the NetworkManager package, which as has been discussed in other documentation should not be installed on Azure VMs and conflicts with our WALinuxAgent package.

Simply forcing NetworkManager to install will often remove the WALinuxAgent package, which is a bad thing(tm).  Other user guides have suggested simply installing NetworkManager, force removing it and then reinstalling the WALinuxAgent package.  This is not the best solution and could results in removing important files.  The best and easiest solution is to simply exclude NetworkManager and NetworkManager-gnome from installation and updates.  Your GNOME desktop will work just fine without it.

There are two ways to do this -

1. Edit /etc/yum.conf and add the following line to the end of the file:
   
       exclude=NetworkManager*
   
   Then run:
   
       # yum clean all
       # yum groupinstall basic-desktop desktop-platform x11 fonts
   
2. Alternatively, you can also exclude the NetworkManager packages directly on the command-line:
   
       # yum groupinstall basic-desktop desktop-platform x11 fonts  \
                 --exclude=NetworkManager  --exclude=NetworkManager-gnome

Option #1 is an easy one-line fix and probably preferred, as it allows you to update or reinstall GNOME-related packages without always using the additional "--exclude" parameters or worrying about accidentally removing the WALinuxAgent package.

I hope this helps!