How do I get the full Ubuntu Gnome Experience via XRDP

How do I get the full Ubuntu Gnome experience instead of the generic Gnome experience via XRDP?

When I login from the console, I get the Ubuntu customization of Gnome: The dock is a stripe that extends from the one edge of the screen to the other, and the Settings app has a Dock entry.

When I login via XRDP, it looks like Generic Gnome: The dock is only large enough to contain its icons, and Settings has no Dock entry. More importantly, I have a bunch of icons on my "Ubuntu" desktop which are absent from the "generic" desktop.

I've read, "Ubuntu dock setting is accessible only from the GNOME session(s) customised by Ubuntu, not from the default GNOME session(s)," so that's why I think I'm getting generic GNOME via XRDP.

• I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.3 and selected the 'Ubuntu' window manager.
• I've installed xdrp.
• I've created a .xsession with gnome-session --session=ubuntu and chmod +x.

Before creating .xsession, ps showed gnome-session-binary --session=ubuntu for console sessions and gnome-session-binary for XDRP sessions. After creating .xsession (and restarting), both sessions include --session=ubuntu, but the XRDP session still LOOKS like generic Gnome and it is missing my desktop icons.

I checked $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP. On the console it is ubuntu:GNOME. On XRDP it is "GNOME". So I launched --session=ubuntu but it seems to have been lost.

How do I get the full Ubuntu Gnome experience instead of the generic Gnome experience via XRDP?

This was covered in a thread on their git repo forum here. One relativery simple way to activate the full desktop experience is to edit the startwm.sh script located under /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh which looks like that:

#!/bin/sh
# xrdp X session start script (c) 2015, 2017 mirabilos
# published under The MirOS Licence

if test -r /etc/profile; then
    . /etc/profile
fi

if test -r /etc/default/locale; then
    . /etc/default/locale
    test -z "${LANG+x}" || export LANG
    test -z "${LANGUAGE+x}" || export LANGUAGE
    test -z "${LC_ADDRESS+x}" || export LC_ADDRESS
    test -z "${LC_ALL+x}" || export LC_ALL
    test -z "${LC_COLLATE+x}" || export LC_COLLATE
    test -z "${LC_CTYPE+x}" || export LC_CTYPE
    test -z "${LC_IDENTIFICATION+x}" || export LC_IDENTIFICATION
    test -z "${LC_MEASUREMENT+x}" || export LC_MEASUREMENT
    test -z "${LC_MESSAGES+x}" || export LC_MESSAGES
    test -z "${LC_MONETARY+x}" || export LC_MONETARY
    test -z "${LC_NAME+x}" || export LC_NAME
    test -z "${LC_NUMERIC+x}" || export LC_NUMERIC
    test -z "${LC_PAPER+x}" || export LC_PAPER
    test -z "${LC_TELEPHONE+x}" || export LC_TELEPHONE
    test -z "${LC_TIME+x}" || export LC_TIME
    test -z "${LOCPATH+x}" || export LOCPATH
fi

if test -r /etc/profile; then
    . /etc/profile
fi

test -x /etc/X11/Xsession && exec /etc/X11/Xsession
exec /bin/sh /etc/X11/Xsession

NOTE: Do not delete it and replace it because it will make xrdp fail at launch. Just edit the file in place with sed for instance. Here I add 3 lines starting at line 4. They are going to be appended from line 4 to 6.

sudo sed -i '4 i\export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=ubuntu:GNOME' /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh
sudo sed -i '4 i\export GNOME_SHELL_SESSION_MODE=ubuntu' /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh
sudo sed -i '4 i\export DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu' /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh

The end file looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
# xrdp X session start script (c) 2015, 2017 mirabilos \
# published under The MirOS Licence
export DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu
export GNOME_SHELL_SESSION_MODE=ubuntu
export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=ubuntu:GNOME

if test -r /etc/profile; then
    . /etc/profile
fi
if test -r /etc/default/locale; then
    . /etc/default/locale
    
    test -z "${LANG+x}" || export LANG
    test -z "${LANGUAGE+x}" || export LANGUAGE
    test -z "${LC_ADDRESS+x}" || export LC_ADDRESS
    test -z "${LC_ALL+x}" || export LC_ALL
    test -z "${LC_COLLATE+x}" || export LC_COLLATE
    test -z "${LC_CTYPE+x}" || export LC_CTYPE
    test -z "${LC_IDENTIFICATION+x}" || export LC_IDENTIFICATION
    test -z "${LC_MEASUREMENT+x}" || export LC_MEASUREMENT
    test -z "${LC_MESSAGES+x}" || export LC_MESSAGES
    test -z "${LC_MONETARY+x}" || export LC_MONETARY
    test -z "${LC_NAME+x}" || export LC_NAME
    test -z "${LC_NUMERIC+x}" || export LC_NUMERIC
    test -z "${LC_PAPER+x}" || export LC_PAPER
    test -z "${LC_TELEPHONE+x}" || export LC_TELEPHONE
    test -z "${LC_TIME+x}" || export LC_TIME
    test -z "${LOCPATH+x}" || export LOCPATH
fi

if test -r /etc/profile; then
    . /etc/profile
fi
test -x /etc/X11/Xsession && exec /etc/X11/Xsession
exec /bin/sh /etc/X11/Xsession

After that, systemctl restart xrdp.service or restart your machine and it should work fine. Here is my xrdp session after restart.