RemoteApp not launching after xfreerdp3 upgrade (falls back to desktop / blank screen)

[caleadfooter]

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• WinApps: latest from GitHub
• FreeRDP: xfreerdp3 (recently upgraded)
• VM: Windows 10 Pro running via KVM/virt-manager

Expected Behavior

• WinApps should launch RemoteApp applications directly (e.g., cmd.exe) without showing the full desktop.

Actual Behavior

• Connection initiates successfully
• A blue or partial desktop window appears
• RemoteApp never attaches or launches
• No noticeable CPU activity spike on the VM during launch attempt
• Behavior looks like fallback to a desktop session instead of RemoteApp

What Changed

• This issue started immediately after calling bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/winapps-org/winapps/main/setup.sh)
• The same setup previously worked correctly with an older FreeRDP version.

Tests Performed

• Restored previously working WinApps config
• Verified credentials and connection
• Confirmed WinApps is executed under the correct user
• Tested with and without certain flags (e.g., removed +clipboard)
• Cleared RDP sessions (killrdp, cleanrdp, pkill -9 xfreerdp3)
• Verified standard RDP session to VM works normally

Current Config (sanitized)
RDP_FLAGS="/cert:ignore /multimon:force /span /gfx /network:auto /sound /microphone +dynamic-resolution +home-drive +auto-reconnect /auto-reconnect-max-retries:100 /prevent-session-lock:180"

Additional Notes

• This appears specific to RemoteApp behavior
• Full desktop RDP connections work without issue
• No changes were made to the VM or WinApps config besides the FreeRDP upgrade

[oskardotglobal]

What exact FreeRDP version are you on?

[caleadfooter]

my xfreerdp3 version is 3.5.1

[bmullan]

@caleadfooter

I do not think this is a Winapps problem but may be a problem with xfreerdp3 v3.5.1

I've been using xfreerdp3 w/out Winapps for a several years on Ubuntu successfully to launch Win10, now Win11 remoteapps.
The remoteapps until sometime recently, always appeared in their own Gnome desktop window like any other linux app.

I've seeing the exact same symptoms you describe above!

My Environment

OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 - Gnome using x11
No Winapps used - I was searching for a "fix" to the same remoteapp problem which lead me to your OP here.
VM: Windows 11 Pro running - 4 vCPU 8 GB memory
xlfreerdp3-x11 and xfreerdp-wayland previously installed & working with remoteapp

I'm using xfreerdp3 v3.5.1 from Freerdp (no WinApps)

• Which is why I think the root cause for this may be the freerdp v3.5.1.

Your symptoms are identical to mine but you are using WinApps.

Connection initiates successfully
A blue or partial desktop window appears
RemoteApp never attaches or launches
Behavior looks like fallback to a desktop session instead of RemoteApp

So that brought me to WinApps but after manual install, WinApps run with the same Win11VM still shows the same problem!

Then I thought I remembered sometime not long ago that I saw xfreerdp3 was v3.5.0 not v3.5.1.

So I just started searching to find, how to revert, back to the previous version xfreerdp3 v3.5.0 and see if this problem goes away.

[oskardotglobal]

Try upgrading FreeRDP to latest (3.23) too

[bmullan]

@oskardotglobal - I did try the latest.

I forget what failed but I didn't spend a lot of time looking at that because I knew the previous freerdp v3.5.0 worked.

Quite frankly I just wanted to get my project moving forward and & needed my particular RemoteApp to work again to help me with that.

I hope to get some time to file a bug with freerdp & hopefully whatever is the cause ... the fix will be propagated to the newer versions of its not already fixed in them.

[bmullan]

@oskardotglobal @caleadfooter

Success... at least on my systems!

See if this fixes that same problem with your use of WinApp and let me know.

Removing freerdp v3.5.1 and reverting to freerdp v3.5.0 worked for me using the same Win11Pro VM and same commands.

Now I have RemoteApps working again correctly!

So this RemoteApp failure is due to freerdp v3.5.1.

On Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Step 1
I used apt-get to delete freerdp v3.5.1 files from my system where RemoteApps were failing.

Step 2
Then I used the downloaded freerdp v3.5.0 .DEB files from this site.
You have to search for each one of the .DEB in the Step3 command in and download them all to some directory.

Step 3
While in the directory I put the .DEB files I installed the them using the command:

$ sudo apt install ./libwinpr3-3_3.5.0+dfsg1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ./libfreerdp3-3_3.5.0+dfsg1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ./libfreerdp-client3-3_3.5.0+dfsg1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ./freerdp3-wayland_3.5.0+dfsg1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ./freerdp3-x11_3.5.0+dfsg1-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Note: the .DEB have to be in that exact order due to dependencies needing to be met by later .DEB in that command line.

Important Note
Once you have removed freerdp v3.5.1 and installed freerdp v3.5.0 you need to keep future Ubuntu apt updates from
just re-installing freerdp v3.5.1 & breaking your Remoteapps again... at least until the problem gets fixed.

So if freerdp v3.5.0 works for you, you must prevent Ubuntu from upgrading the freerdp v3.5.0 to v3.5.1 all over again.

This is done by putting the freerdp v3.5.0 packages" "on hold" from upgrades.

I just made 2 bash scripts to do this (see attached):
hold-freerdp.sh - put the installed freerdp v3.5.0 packages "on-hold"
unhold-freerdp.sh - remove the "hold" on freerdp packages

hold-freerdp.sh
unhold-freerdp.sh

When a freerdp fix for this freerdp remoteapp gets put into the Ubuntu 24.04 repository you can run the "unhold" script to have Ubuntu update to that new freerdp version.

I don't know what version of freerdp is going to be the default in the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS to be release in Apr.