Personal blog

A step-by-step guide to using the graphical desktop of a headless Linux server, such as a VPS, remotely over RDP. You install xrdp, the XFCE desktop, chosen over GNOME because it is lightweight and suited to a server without a graphics card, and the LightDM login manager; then you give xrdp access to the TLS certificate through the ssl-cert group, to avoid the black screen, and select XFCE as the session.

The heart of the guide is the clipboard shared in both directions: how the CLIPRDR channel and xrdp-chansrv work, which restrictions to lift in sesman.ini, how to get rid of the orphaned chansrv processes that make copy and paste intermittent, and how to paste images or share the client's folders. It closes with turning off compositing if GIMP misbehaves and the advice to expose RDP only through a VPN.