Lubuntu + xrdp: FeatherPad won't launch

[mtvessel]

FeatherPad works fine when connecting locally to my Lubuntu 20.04 instance, When connected from Windows 10, using RDP (xrdp on Lubuntu), all other lxqt apps work, but FeatherPad doesn't launch.

Sorry for the vague description, but please let me know what other details I can provide. And thank you for this very useful text editor!

[tsujan]

I converted your report to a discussion because the problem you've encountered can hardly be in FeatherPad.

I'm not familiar with RDP or xrdp, but there may be a message somewhere. Run FeatherPad from a terminal to see if there is any message.

Also, as far as I know, the version of FeatherPad in Lubuntu should be very old, although that may not be relevant in this case.

[mtvessel]

Well, I made many changes along the way, and I'm honestly not sure what did the trick here, including switching from lxqt to xfce and back again (FeatherPad did not work under xfce either). The only change that seems remotely related, is that in /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh, I added the line

. $HOME/.profile

right before the line:

if test -r /etc/profile; then

based on advice from this youtube video - How to Fix Black Screen When Remote Desktop to Ubuntu Desktop 20 from Windows 10 Using XRDP.

Cheers!

[tsujan]

Thanks!

As I said above, I'm not familiar with xrdp, but I still don't understand how it's possible that no message was shown in the terminal. Apparently, an RDP session has its own peculiarities.

[tsujan]

Oh, one simple explanation comes to my mind:

Maybe, a FeatherPad window was already open in another desktop, so that it wasn't visible. If RDP had a problem in recognizing X11 virtual desktops, each featherpad command would just open a new tab in that window and return, and since the window wasn't visible, the user would think that nothing happened.

[mtvessel]

I don't know much about xrdp myself (other than as a user), but that's quite plausible. Previously, I had a session open at the console, and it may have been still logged in when I was first trying rdp. After the reboot, I did not log in at the console, and it worked without issue.

[tsujan]

You could also check Preferences → Window → Always open in separate windows when using RDP. It causes new files to be opened in new windows, instead of new tabs of the same window.