From an end-user perspective, what's the difference between the "Desktop" and "Desktop Platform"? Im looking to install graphical tools and use them through XRDP from my Windows desktop.
Wondering what the difference is, and which would be good choice given my intended use. Im not really a developer, so don't need compilers/debuggers etc, but more for using tools such as Blender and image rendering/editing software such as gimp.

From an end-user perspective they're basically the same. Desktop platform isn't a real thing but a logical one. It's a term sometimes used by developers to describe the target audience of their development. That is, generically describing end user desktops no matter their form factor, architecture, operating system, etc. "mobile platform" and "server platform" are also generic terms that are treated the same.

Desktop/mobile/server platform terms are used when the person saying it is lazy (I.e. Save time conveying a point) or to abstract details away from a less technical perspective.

Thanks.
I tried 2 different ways to install.
1) Install "Desktop" system from DVD
2) Install "Minimal" system from DVD and then yum group install "Desktop" "Desktop Platform".
The first worked fine, and I got RDP working, the second seems to get RDP installed, but when I login at the graphical login screen, it sais an error occurred and goes back to the graphical login screen. Yes, I did change the inittab to runlevel 5...

PS, for completeness, this is how i installed RDP:
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6.6/...6-8.noarch.rpm
yum install -y xrdp
chkconfig --levels 5 xrdp on
service xrdp start
iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 3389 -j ACCEPT
service iptables save
service iptables restart

The reason im trying this is that both the "Desktop" and "Minimal" install works fine on a VM, but when I try to install on the actual HW, the Minimal install works but the Desktop install craps out during the DVD bootup. So, im looking for a way to get to the "Desktop" system starting from the "Minimal" install.

If your goal is to use graphics and rendering software then CentOS would not be my first choice of OS. Any particular reason why you chose it over, in my opinion, better suited alternatives?

Best reason I have is that I use CentOS/RHEL at work and am familiar with using it in a server environment. Im not familiar with the other distributions and how they work or layout their systems, so it would be a learning curve. But im not sure what difference it would make, the programs I want to run in GUI mode should work on any distro as far as I know, so it seems like CentOS would be the logical choice.
Is there some reason I should choose a different distro?

To use desktop (which I believe is the gnome desktop manager) you need to install the X11 group as well (which provides the windows environment). The desktop platform provides additional utilities on top of gnome. Hope that helps.

Thanks, I installed "X Window Syste" and "Desktop" and got it working.