Connecting to Ubuntu using Remote Desktop Connection on Windows 7

I'm trying to connect to a machine with Ubuntu from a different machine running Windows 7 using the Windows Program Remote Desktop Connection.

I used the command:

sudo apt-get install xrdp

which worked, except that when I connect from my Windows I can only see the blank desktop background of the remote Ubuntu. The taskbar, icons etc are all missing. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks

1 Answer

In my experience, neither RDP nor VNC work satisfactorily with the default 3d (compiz-based) Ubuntu session. For RDP you can specify a different desktop session using the ~/.xsession file on your remote account, for example if it contains

gnome-session --session=ubuntu-2d

then you will get a 2d (metacity-based) desktop, which will likely work better over RDP. Alternatively you can install the gnome-session-fallback package and then run a gnome-classic session

gnome-session --session=gnome-classic

In VNC the equivalent session-setting is done via the ~/.vnc/xstartup file. You can check the available desktop sessions on your system using

ls /usr/share/xsessions