Hey there guys,

I am new to the forum and want to discuss an issue I have trouble with. First, I want to apologize if my English might suck since it's not my native language.
Anyways... I am running an Ubuntu 16.04 server and I know, usually you shouldn't use a GUI on a server but that's my choice.

So the idea is to access the Ubuntu server with Window's remote desktop connection. I think there is no other way than using xrdp for that.
I followed thousands of instructions on the internet but never got it working. Cinnamon worked fine for some reason but I can't get KDE working.

What I did is to update my server with:

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sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade


After that I installed the Kubuntu-Desktop with:

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sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop


Then I updated again with:

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sudo apt update


After updating, I installed xrdp with

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sudo apt-get install xrdp


So now, you have to define that xrdp starts with the kubuntu desktop environment. I found that most people do it with xsession like this:

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sudo echo "startkde" > ~/.xsession


But that didn't work for me. When I tried to conect with the remote desktop but when I tried to login, I got an error.

So I tried a different way. I found a post that said since 16.04, you need to adjust the startwm.sh in /etc/xrdp, so I did.
After that I made a reboot and was able to login with the remote desktop but got a grey screen. Nothing happens...

Any ideas?

Hi, did you try to install another client?
For example, Remina Desktop client works well for me with rdp protocol under ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Neon KDE.
I wish you could solve the problem.

j8a wrote:Hi, did you try to install another client?
For example, Remina Desktop client works well for me with rdp protocol under ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Neon KDE.
I wish you could solve the problem.

Thanks for the answer. I've never heard of that. Sounds interesting. Isn't Neon KDE like Kubuntu? If so, I would love to have this aswell.
How does this work?

Have you tried using the full path to startkde in the .xsession file (I'm not entirely sure if this is necessary)?
Do errors show up in ~/.xsession-errors or /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log? If so, what?

I know this is very late, but I figure it would be beneficial to leave this for posterity since I spent a few hours trying to figure this out for myself.

I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 and the only thing that has worked for me so far is running:

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sudo update-alternatives --config x-session-manager

Then I'm given some options such as the following, depending on the desktop environments I've installed:

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There are 9 choices for the alternative x-session-manager (providing /usr/bin/x-session-manager).
  Selection    Path                      Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/bin/startlxde         50        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/gnome-session     50        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/lxsession         49        manual mode
  3            /usr/bin/mate-session      50        manual mode
  4            /usr/bin/openbox-session   40        manual mode
* 5            /usr/bin/startlxde         50        manual mode
  6            /usr/bin/startlxqt         50        manual mode
  7            /usr/bin/startplasma-x11   40        manual mode
  8            /usr/bin/startxfce4        50        manual mode
  9            /usr/bin/xfce4-session     40        manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 2
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/lxsession to provide /usr/bin/x-session-manager (x-session-manager) in manual mode

After that I just log back via xRDP and I see the selected desktop environment.

I've written a post on a blog about it, and I hope it's allowed to post it here https://thunderboltlaptop.com/install-x ... s_for_xRDP