Set up a graphical interface

You can display the graphical desktop in various ways. In this document, we describe two options: RDP (Remote Display Protocol) and plain X11 forwarding. Other methods include VNC and running a Mir shell through X11 forwarding, as described in A simple GUI shell for a Multipass VM.

Using RDP

The images used by Multipass do not come with a graphical desktop installed. For this reason, you will have to install a desktop environment. Here, we use ubuntu-desktop but there are as many other options as flavours of Ubuntu exist. You also have to install the RDP server. We will use XRDP or GNOME Remote Desktop but there are also other options such as FreeRDP.

Which RDP server to use

Ubuntu 25.10 with GNOME removed support for the X11 protocol, and as a consequence, XRDP no longer works there. Choose the RDP server depending on the Ubuntu release and the desktop on your instance:

Instance	RDP server
Earlier than Ubuntu 25.10	Set up the XRDP server
Ubuntu 25.10 and later with GNOME	Set up the GNOME Remote Desktop server
Ubuntu 25.10 and later with KDE, Xfce or other alternative desktop	Set up the XRDP server

Set up the XRDP server

Use this RDP server with Ubuntu Desktop earlier than version 25.10 as your instance, such as Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 LTS. You can also use XRDP with alternative desktops such as KDE or Xfce regardless of the Ubuntu release.

First, you need to log into a running Multipass instance. Start by listing your instances:

multipass list

Sample output:

Name                    State             IPv4             Image
headbanging-squid       Running           10.49.93.209     Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Next, open a shell into the running instance:

multipass shell headbanging-squid

Once inside the instance, run the following commands to install ubuntu-desktop and xrdp:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop xrdp

Now we need a user with a password to log in. One possibility is setting a password for the default ubuntu user:

sudo passwd ubuntu

You will be asked to enter and re-enter a password.

You are done on the server side! Quit the Ubuntu shell on the running instance with the exit command. Proceed to Connect to the instance with an RDP client.

Set up the GNOME Remote Desktop server

This RDP server only works with the default GNOME desktop. You can use it with Ubuntu Desktop 25.10, 26.04 LTS and later as your instance.

1. Create the following cloud-init.yaml configuration file:

   cloud-init.yaml

   package_update: true
   package_upgrade: true
   users:
   - default
   packages:
   - ubuntu-desktop
   - gnome-remote-desktop
   - winpr3-utils
   runcmd:
   - sudo -u gnome-remote-desktop winpr-makecert3 -silent -rdp -path ~gnome-remote-desktop rdp-tls
   - grdctl --system rdp set-tls-key ~gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.key
   - grdctl --system rdp set-tls-cert ~gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.crt
   - grdctl --system rdp set-credentials ubuntu <your-password>
   - echo ubuntu:<your-password> | sudo chpasswd
   - echo /usr/sbin/nologin >> /etc/shells
   - grdctl --system rdp enable
   - systemctl enable --now gnome-remote-desktop.service
   - systemctl enable --now gdm
   - sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
   - loginctl enable-linger ubuntu
   

   Replace <your-password> with a secure password on the highlighted lines.

2. Launch the configured Multipass instance:

   multipass launch \
      --memory 12G \
      --cpus=2 \
      --disk 30G \
      --timeout 600 \
      --cloud-init ./cloud-init.yaml 25.10
   

   Adjust the --memory, --cpus and --disk options as needed on your system.

   The command sets the timeout to 10 minutes because the default timeout of 5 minutes isn’t enough to initialise the instance.

3. List your instances:

   multipass list
   

   Sample output:

   Name                    State             IPv4             Image
   headbanging-squid       Running           10.49.93.209     Ubuntu 25.10
   

4. Restart the Multipass instance:

   multipass restart headbanging-squid
   

5. Proceed to Connect to the instance with an RDP client.

Connect to the instance with an RDP client

Find the instance’s IP address in the output of multipass list, or you can use the multipass info command:

multipass info headbanging-squid

Sample output:

Name:           headbanging-squid
State:          Running
Snapshots:      0
IPv4:           10.49.93.209
Release:        Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Image hash:     2e0c90562af1 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s):         4
Load:           0.00 0.00 0.00
Disk usage:     1.8GiB out of 5.7GiB
Memory usage:   294.2MiB out of 3.8GiB
Mounts:         --

In this example, we will use the IP address 10.49.93.209 to connect to the RDP server on the instance.

Note

If the IP address of the instance is not displayed in the output of multipass list, you can obtain it directly from the instance, with the command ip addr.

LinuxmacOSWindows

On Linux, there are applications such as Remmina to visualise the desktop.

Make sure that the remmina and remmina-plugin-rdp packages are installed.

To directly launch the client, run the following command:

remmina -c rdp://10.49.93.209

Note

To enable audio, open the Remmina application instead of connecting directly. Create a connection and set Audio output mode to Local in Advanced settings. Confirm with Save and Connect.

The system will ask for a username (ubuntu) and the password set above, and then the Ubuntu desktop on the instance will be displayed.

And we are done… a graphical desktop!

Using X11 forwarding

It might be the case that we only want Multipass to launch one application and to see only that window, without having the need for a complete desktop. It turns out that this setup is simpler than the RDP approach, because we do not need the Multipass instance to deploy a full desktop. Instead, we can use X11 to connect the applications in the instance with the graphical capabilities of the host.

LinuxmacOSWindows

Linux runs X by default, so no extra software in the host is needed.

On Linux, we can use authentication in X forwarding to add a bit more security. However, we will forward through SSH to avoid struggling with xauth. Our user in the host will log in to the Multipass instance through SSH, so that we can pass extra parameters to it.

To make this possible, copy your public key, stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, to the list of authorised keys of the instance, into the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Remember to replace the instance name used in the example with yours:

multipass exec headbanging-squid -- bash -c "echo `cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub` >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Note

If the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub does not exist, it means that you need to create your SSH keys. Use ssh-keygen to create them and then run the previous command again.

Check the IP address of the instance, using multipass info headbanging-squid Finally, log in to the instance using X forwarding using the command (replace xx.xx.xx.xx with the IP address obtained above):

ssh -X ubuntu@xx.xx.xx.xx

Test the setting running a program of your choice on the instance; for example:

sudo apt -y install x11-apps
xlogo &

A small window containing the X logo will show up. Done!