Hi all, I'm writing again about my RFS for lamco-rdp-server (Bug #1127979), now updated to v1.4.2. The package has been on mentors since mid-February and has gone through thorough review from Tobias Frost and Fabio Fantoni (10 items total, all addressed), but I still haven't found a DD sponsor.
I want to step back from the packaging mechanics for a moment and talk about why this package matters. The Wayland remote desktop gap is real, and it's holding back adoption. Every enterprise IT team evaluating Linux desktops hits the same wall: remote access. RDP is the lingua franca of remote desktop in corporate environments. Windows has had it since XP. macOS has a built-in RDP server. Linux under X11 had mature options (xrdp, x11vnc). But the Wayland transition broke all of them, and nothing has filled the gap. This isn't a niche problem. Wayland is now the default session on GNOME (since 41), KDE Plasma (since 6.0), and every major compositor shipping in Debian Trixie. The compositors have moved on. The remote access tooling has not. lamco-rdp-server is, to my knowledge, the first RDP server built from the ground up for the Wayland protocol stack. It uses the infrastructure Wayland actually provides — XDG Desktop Portal for screen capture consent, PipeWire for frame delivery, libei for input injection — rather than trying to shim X11 semantics back in. It works today across GNOME, KDE Plasma, Sway, Hyprland, and other wlroots compositors, with automatic backend detection. Why this belongs in Debian: - Debian Trixie ships Wayland-default desktops but has no Wayland-native RDP server in the archive. Users who need remote access are stuck with X11 sessions or VNC (which has its own Wayland gaps). - The Wayland ecosystem needs packages that demonstrate the portal/PipeWire stack working end-to-end in production. Every package that does this well raises the floor for the whole ecosystem. - Enterprise users — the ones who decide whether departments run Debian or Windows — need RDP. Not VNC, not SSH tunnels, not "have you tried Sunshine?" They need what their helpdesk already knows: Remote Desktop Connection. - The package is built on IronRDP, an open-source Rust RDP implementation. The upstream work feeding back into IronRDP (EGFX graphics pipeline, clipboard, input handling) benefits every project in the Rust RDP ecosystem. Package details: - License: BUSL-1.1 (hence non-free), converts to Apache-2.0 on 2028-12-31 - v1.4.2 fixes PipeWire 1.4.x compatibility (pipewire-rs 0.9.2) and VA-API compatibility with libva 2.22+ - Vendored Cargo build with full DEP-5 copyright (857 crate dependencies enumerated) - Salsa CI green, gbp workflow, all lintian findings addressed - Desktop file, AppStream metainfo, systemd user service, D-Bus activation, polkit policy — the full desktop integration stack The sponsorship challenge: I need a DD comfortable reviewing a Rust package in non-free. Tobias Frost did a thorough review but declined because he doesn't work in Rust. I've reached out to Mike Gabriel (debian-remote), Michael Tokarev (active freerdp3 and Rust uploader), and debian-rust. I'm not asking anyone to learn Rust for this — if you're already working in Rust and have 30 minutes, the packaging is clean and CI-verified. RFS: https://bugs.debian.org/1127979 Mentors: https://mentors.debian.net/package/lamco-rdp-server/ Salsa: https://salsa.debian.org/glamberson/lamco-rdp-server Upstream: https://github.com/lamco-admin/lamco-rdp-server Thanks for reading this far. Happy to answer any questions about the package, the Wayland integration approach, or the upstream work. Greg Lamberson [email protected]
