Which systemd target represents the graphical user interface environment?

• A. default.target
• B. multi-user.target
• C. graphical.target
• D. graphical-isolated.target

Answer: (C)

In systemd, targets describe a system state by grouping the units needed for that state. The graphical user interface is provided by the graphical.target, which pulls in the display manager and graphical session components so you boot into a GUI. This is the target you’d use to reach or switch to a graphical environment (for example, you can set it as the default boot target or isolate it to switch to GUI from text mode). By contrast, a non-graphical run level is represented by multi-user.target, and graphical-isolated.target is a more isolated variant of the GUI target used mainly for troubleshooting. default.target is just the boot target the system aims for (often a symlink to either graphical.target or multi-user.target). So, the target that represents the graphical user interface is graphical.target.