How to startX (show desktop GUI) on VirtualBox / VMWare ?

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The images don't have a graphical user interface installed to save space. The idea is that only the Sage process is running in the virtual machine, and notebooks are displayed using the host's web browser. You can also share directories with the virtual machine and ssh into the virtual machine, for the record. So you can access pretty much everything from the host machine.

If you really wanted to run a full graphical desktop in the virtual machine, you could just use the package manager to install it:

sudo yum groupinstall "X Window System" "GNOME Desktop Environment"

This will install everything necessary for a graphical desktop. However, the virtual harddisk space is very limited. I tried this command and it failed due to insufficient space. One could try to resize the harddisk, but it is probably easier to install a fresh virtual machine from scratch.

If you feel more comfortable to run a sage-VM with a GUI try this image (400 MB) (unzip it to get a VMware image). This VM is handcrafted for desktop use, e.g. on windows computer. It is application only and has no development files and it is single user, i.e. it is not possible to setup a multi-user sage server.

For long term use it might therefore pay off to get comfortable with the CLI interface and use the official machine, which has the full package with all features. As stated above: the GUI is superfluous eye candy.

Volker Braun (I don't know how to call you with respect ,sorry) give the correct answer.In fact ,to install the GNOME Desktop Environment is not possible since the disk is limited,and to add space to /filesystem is a tedious job. Maybe fdisk or other tools can help you.I've tried,but failed.You can make a unix system with GUI then install sage ,with the notebook(interface=r'') command ,that works when the virtual and host pc network is NAT. That's my opinion.