A Wayland desktop per account on your server, over RDP.

One apt install on Debian 13 or Ubuntu 26.04 (amd64 or arm64). Every account that logs in over RDP gets its own headless sway session with a shell, kept alive across disconnects, with memory ceilings and a refusal when the machine is full. H.264 over RDP, no GPU needed. Free software, early. Tested with FreeRDP and the Windows App on macOS. Source on GitHub.

$ curl -fsSLO https://waydesk.dev/apt/waydesk-repo.deb
$ sudo apt install ./waydesk-repo.deb
$ sudo apt install waydesk
$ sudo waydesk-setup-admin
$ sudo waydesk-admin status
Memory    7.6 GB in all, 504 MB available
Swap      zram0 7.6 GB (7.5 GB used)
Load      1.01 1.26 1.29 (4 cores)
Sessions  7 running; a new one would be REFUSED: 504 MB available, 1161 MB needed

ACCOUNT   SESSION  MEMORY  SWAP    CPU  LIMIT   PROGRAMS (resident)
u1        running  416 MB  1.0 GB   3%  3.8 GB  code 194 MB, qs 132 MB, chrome 120 MB
u2        running  472 MB  1.0 GB   4%  3.8 GB  code 263 MB, qs 133 MB, chrome 126 MB
u3        running  438 MB  1.1 GB   3%  3.8 GB  code 186 MB, chrome 176 MB, qs 134 MB
u4        running  455 MB  1.1 GB   3%  3.8 GB  chrome 219 MB, code 206 MB, qs 138 MB
u5        running  477 MB  1.0 GB   4%  3.8 GB  chrome 277 MB, code 252 MB, qs 138 MB
u6        running  858 MB  672 MB   7%  3.8 GB  code 529 MB, chrome 437 MB, qs 173 MB
u7        running  1.5 GB   95 MB   4%  3.8 GB  code 862 MB, chrome 793 MB, qs 265 MB

Real output: Ubuntu 26.04, 4 vCPU, 7.6 GB, seven accounts each with Chromium, LibreOffice Calc and VS Code open, 2026-10-24. Accounts that were idle for a while have most of their memory in compressed swap, which is why the eighth one is refused only now.

Install

Run as an administrator of the server. The port listens on 127.0.0.1 only; see reaching it.

1. Add the repository

One small package: the signing key, the apt source for your release (trixie or resolute, chosen from VERSION_CODENAME) and a pin so these packages win over third-party builds of the same names.

$ curl -fsSLO https://waydesk.dev/apt/waydesk-repo.deb
$ sudo apt install ./waydesk-repo.deb

2. Check the key

This first download cannot be verified by the repository itself. Compare the key you got with this fingerprint (ed25519, expires 2029-10-21):

$ gpg --show-keys --with-fingerprint /usr/share/keyrings/waydesk-archive-keyring.gpg

If it differs, stop and tell us.

3. Install

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install waydesk

Installs the RDP daemon, the root helper, waydesk-admin, our sway build, zram swap and the desktop package. waydesk-server alone is enough for a session with a plain terminal (a minimal sway config ships with it).

4. Shell and first administrator

$ sudo waydesk-setup           # wizard: shell, Chromium, LibreOffice, VS Code, ...
$ sudo waydesk-setup-admin     # the account that logs in over RDP and manages the others

There is no default account and no default password. waydesk-setup-admin prints the certificate fingerprint to expect on the first connection.

Support

"Tested": a clean server, SSH hardened first, then exactly the four steps above, an RDP login from FreeRDP and a look at the session. Ubuntu's own xfreerdp3 (3.32) cannot decode our H.264 stream; Debian 13's client (3.15) can. The Windows App on macOS was also used; Microsoft Remote Desktop and mstsc on Windows were not tested.

Architecture

A session is a systemd unit of the account, so it survives a disconnect, sits in user-UID.slice (limits there apply) and is killed with its control group. A second login from the same account takes the running session over. Design notes: docs/MULTIUSER-DESIGN.md in the repository.

Measurements

All figures are from our own servers (Hetzner cloud, no GPU), with the method next to them. Full tables and the failed attempts are in docs/MEASUREMENTS.md in the repository.

Heavy users on 8 GB, 4 vCPU (x86_64)

Available memory (free's figure) after each user has logged in over RDP and opened Chromium (Wikipedia, BBC News, debian.org), LibreOffice Calc with a 300,000 x 10 CSV and VS Code on a source tree.

Method: one account at a time, 70 s after its last application started, applications left idle (an upper bound for idle load, no figure for active work). The server refuses a session when less than about 1.1 GB is available; the refusal reaches the client as ERRINFO_OUT_OF_MEMORY. No out-of-memory kill in any run; memory pressure ("some", 60 s average) 0.3 to 2.4 %. One heavy user costs 1.85 GB (Debian) to 2.0 GB (Ubuntu, Flatpak builds of Chromium and VS Code, a 30 MB tree instead of 25 MB).

Compressed swap

zram with zstd compresses this load about 4.5 to 5 : 1 (Ubuntu: 6.6 GB of data in 1.3 GB of RAM at seven users). The package sizes the device like the RAM (at most 16 GiB). With Debian's default of half the RAM, six heavy users fit instead of eight.

Other figures

Not measured: CPU under active work (a build, a recalculation), typing and scrolling latency, frame rate on x86 with moving screens.

Security

Reaching it

Do not put the RDP port on the internet. The daemon binds 127.0.0.1:3389 and the login is the account's own password, checked by PAM, sent inside TLS with a self-signed certificate (PAM cannot do NLA). Anyone who can intercept an unchecked certificate can read passwords, so check the fingerprint on first use.

$ ssh -N -L 13389:127.0.0.1:3389 you@server    # then connect the client to localhost:13389

For several people: WireGuard, a key per device, RDP bound to the VPN address, only UDP 51820 open. docs/WIREGUARD.md has the configuration (installed as /usr/share/doc/waydesk-server/WIREGUARD.md).

Threat model

• Attacker on the network: sees only TLS. Can guess passwords; failures are counted per account and per address, delayed, and answered identically for unknown and known accounts.
• Compromised daemon: runs as an unprivileged user with a system call filter and a narrow capability set. It can read the streams of live sessions and type into them, and sees passwords in transit. It cannot start a session for an account that did not authenticate on the same connection, and the helper takes no program, path or arguments from it.
• Malicious account: has its own sway, its own runtime directory (0700) and its own clipboard; it cannot capture or inject into another account's session. Memory, tasks and CPU ceilings apply per account.
• Out of scope: drive, printer and smartcard redirection, RD Gateway, running exposed to the internet, GPU sharing.

Open items

• Plain TLS login (above); a second factor is not available.
• The helper trusts the daemon's claim of the client's source address, so a compromised daemon can poison the per-address counters (the per-account counter still holds).
• Passwords are not wiped from memory; daemon and helper are one binary.
• Many failed logins from many addresses are logged, not stopped. pam_faillock in the PAM stack of the service does it, with the trade-off that a stranger can then lock the owner out.
• Chromium from Flathub runs with --password-store=basic: nothing in a Waydesk session unlocks a keyring, so saved passwords and cookies sit under a fixed key, protected by the home directory's permissions only.
• No fuzzing of the RDP side, no independent review. Four internal passes are written down in docs/SECURITY-REVIEW.md; an outside review should start at src/helper.rs, src/auth.rs, src/link.rs, src/proto.rs and the unit files.

Limits

• Early software. Tested with FreeRDP and the Windows App on macOS; Microsoft Remote Desktop (Windows) and mstsc were not tested.
• No GPU: applications that insist on one do not start. Zed fails with "Failed to create surface"; VS Code and LibreOffice work.
• Sizing: on an 8 GB, 4-core server count 7 to 8 users with Chromium, Calc and VS Code open if most are idle. Someone compiling or recalculating needs more, and the server refuses a new session instead of slowing everyone down.
• First run of the Flathub Chromium: a seeded First Run/EULA Accepted skips its terms window, whose text is only a placeholder in that build.

Reference

Packages

Commands: administration

Commands: setup

Units and ports

Files

Key

Packages and indexes are signed with one ed25519 key, fingerprint C64672B25ECD4773196C39589D8E8874E67617F4, expires 2029-10-21. The public key is /apt/waydesk-archive-keyring.gpg.

Changelog

2026-10-24

Ubuntu 26.04 checked from the repository; dms.sh no longer adds Debian backports when the Waydesk repository is configured (it broke apt update on Ubuntu); a client that stops reading is dropped after 60 s; waydesk-server alone starts a session with a minimal sway config; the Flathub Chromium opens without its terms window and keyring prompt; seven heavy users fit on 8 GB.

2026-10-23

Two suites, trixie and resolute, from one pool; private sway and quickshell under /usr/lib/waydesk; Flathub fallback for browsers; heavy-user capacity on Debian; fix for a publishing tool that deleted live packages.

2026-10-22

Signed apt repository, waydesk-repo and waydesk-setup-admin; our own build of the shell as a package; refused logins tell the client why.

2026-10-21

Memory admission, account ceilings and zram; patched sway with title-bar buttons; dock; Chromium as the default browser; third internal security pass.

2026-10-20

Renamed to Waydesk. Desktop icons, themed Qt and Flatpak apps, logind session per account.

2026-10-15 to 19

RDP server for sway, then multi-user daemon, helper and sessions; DankMaterialShell on sway.