SDL2 opens no window without giving any errors - sdl

Question

I'm trying to test a simple SDL2 application. The app runs without any errors. However, no window shows up.
I'm using Ubuntu18.04 on a VMWare machine. I also tried to compile SDL from the source but got the same result. I am unsure if the cause of the problem is related to my OS or because of executing from a virtual machine.
Here is a simple application from docs (I just added SDL_GetNumDisplayModes to make sure the display mode is OK- returns 1)
// Using SDL and standard IO
#include <SDL2/SDL.h>
#include <stdio.h>
// Screen dimension constants
const int SCREEN_WIDTH = 640;
const int SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480;
int main(int argc, char *args[])
{
// The window we'll be rendering to
SDL_Window *window = NULL;
// The surface contained by the window
SDL_Surface *screenSurface = NULL;
// Initialize SDL
if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) < 0)
{
printf("SDL could not initialize! SDL_Error: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
}
else
{
int res = SDL_GetNumDisplayModes(0);
printf("SDL_GetNumDisplayModes: %d\r\n", res);
// Create window
window = SDL_CreateWindow("SDL Tutorial", SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, SDL_WINDOW_SHOWN);
if (window == NULL)
{
printf("Window could not be created! SDL_Error: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
}
else
{
// Get window surface
screenSurface = SDL_GetWindowSurface(window);
// Fill the surface white
SDL_FillRect(screenSurface, NULL, SDL_MapRGB(screenSurface->format, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF));
// Update the surface
SDL_UpdateWindowSurface(window);
// Hack to get window to stay up
SDL_Event e;
bool quit = false;
while (quit == false)
{
while (SDL_PollEvent(&e))
{
if (e.type == SDL_QUIT)
{
quit = true;
}
}
}
}
}
// Destroy window
SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
// Quit SDL subsystems
SDL_Quit();
return 0;
}