The xrdp project is an open source project that added Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) support to Linux machines. You do not get the Desktop-style UI of the Linux machine that you might get if you were to install Ubuntu or some other distribution on a local computer or Virtual Machine (VM). Due to the nature of SSH, the Linux machines command-line is only accessible through the SSH connection. This is a technology that enables a user to remotely connect to a Linux machine (PC or VM) from another computer using the Shell or command-line interface. Traditionally, the only way to remotely connect to a Linux VM is to use SSH (Secure Shell). If you’re not familiar with Windows Remote Desktop, it’s a technology that lets you remotely connect to a Windows PC or VM from another computer in a manner that enables you to see the screen interface (UI) as if you were sitting directly at that computer. Essentially this causes you to be required to SSH into Linux VMs, while you remote into Windows VMs over RDP.

The reason this differs from a Windows VM in Azure as Linux VMs do not support Remote Desktop (RDP) natively. Normally, when you setup a Linux VM (perhaps Ubuntu Server) in Microsoft Azure, you can only connect to and remote into it via SSH.

🙂 Linux Support for Remote Desktop (RDP) It’s worth noting that the steps to install RDP support outlined below will work with any Ubuntu Server instance not just one running in Microsoft Azure. In this article, I want to share some tips I’ve found in how to setup a Linux VM in Azure that you can use for similar purposes. In that article, I showed how you can setup a Windows VM for Development purposes to extend your local development machine with the help of the cloud. Some time back I wrote about doing Visual Studio development with an Azure Virtual Machine (VM).

Setup ubuntu remote desktop server