XRDP with Cinnamon Desktop

If you prefer to use Cinnamon Desktop instead of that bare XFCE4 in your XRDP session on Linux, follow these steps.

Installation

Install Cinnamon and XRDP:

sudo apt install -y cinnamon-desktop-environment
sudo reboot

sudo apt install -y xrdp

Configuration

Adjust cursor settings (fix for invisible cursor):

sudo sed -e 's/^new_cursors=true/new_cursors=false/g' \
           -i /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

Enable and restart the service:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp
sudo systemctl restart xrdp

Session Setup

Make sure XRDP knows it should start Cinnamon:

echo "cinnamon-session" > ~/.xsession

Environment Variables (.xsessionrc)

Create (or edit) your .xsessionrc to set the correct paths:

D=/usr/share/gnome:/usr/share/cinnamon:/usr/local/share:/usr/share
D=${D}:/var/lib/snapd/desktop
C=/etc/xdg/xdg-cinnamon:/etc/xdg

cat <<EOF > ~/.xsessionrc
export XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=cinnamon
export XDG_DATA_DIRS=${D}
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=${C}
EOF

Reboot the server to finish:

sudo reboot