xrdp – New Release available 0.9.25 – End of Life – Pre-Release 0.10

Hello World, 

This is a quick post to let you know that there are some news releases coming for xRDP Software. 

The latest version that has been published is set to 0.9.25.1. It has been released a few weeks ago (March 13, 2024).  This release is mainly providing some bug fixes and no security fixes.  When visiting the Github web page of xrdp, we have also noticed that a new version is being prepared and it’s tagged as version 0.10.  At this stage, version 0.10 is still a pre-release and not officially ready for production.   

Let’s quickly check about these releases…. 

Overview

xRDP is a software package that provide remote desktop capabilities against a Linux machine and mimics the Remote Desktop capabilities that can be found in Windows Operating system.  Using xRDP, you can basically use your standard remote desktop client on Windows or Linux and you can remotely access your Linux Desktop interface.   The team behind the software is releasing on regular basis updates. These updates can introduces new features and/or can address security issues. 

You can find the latest releases & release notes for the xrdp package by visiting this page 

End of life  Version 0.9.xx !!!

This release announcement is a little bit special since the team behind xRDP informed users that xrdp and xorgxrdp version 0.9.x are reaching end of life.   On the Github page, we can see the following announcement 

This is the last v0.9.x version which is released regularly. v0.9.x will be maintained for a while but less actively. New releases will happen only when severe security vulnerabilities or critical bugs are found.

 

Click on Picture for better Resolution

 

About the Release 0.9.25.x and 0.10

This release (0.9.25.1) is not bringing any new features and it basically provide some improvements by fixing identified bugs and issues in previous version.  The important thing to remember here is that 

  • Version 0.9.xx (both xrdp and xorgxrdp) are reaching end of life 
  • Version 0.9.xx (both xrdp and xorgxrdp) will be supported for a while 
  • Version 0.9.xx (both xrdp and xorgxrdp) will not be actively maintained 

This is why the next release of the xrdp/xorgxrdp package is being prepared and still marked as pre-release.   The next version of the package will be using versioning 0.10.x conventions. So far, it seems that there is no much differences between 0.9.xx and 0.10.xx.  The main differences is that the version 0.10. is integrating more commits that the previous release.  

What’s the impact for me ?

If you are using a well established distribution like Ubuntu or Debian, and if you have performed the installation from the distribution repository, you might not be running the latest version of the xRDP package.   The latest version of the xrdp package is usually not being updated automatically in well established distribution. For Ubuntu 24.04, the package available (at time of writing) is still version 0.9.24.  It might get the latest version or not.. 

If you have performed the installation from sources,  you will have to update yourself the package. You should remove the version installed on your system and  recompile from source. So, if you want to use the latest version of xRDP, you will need to compile the software from sources.  You can also use our famous xrdp-installer script that simplifies and automate the installation (on Debian based systems).  (see https://www.c-nergy.be/products.html).  Please note that the latest version of the script has not been tested against xrdp pacakge 0.9.25 yet. So, use the script in a test environment first and validate your xrdp installation.  Since this release is not changing too many things, the xrdp-installer script should be working as expected

Final Notes

This is it for this post !   

As promised, this is really a short post but rather important. 

Indeed, the xrdp team has made this latest xrdp release available (0.9.25.x) in order to fix some minor bugs and that development cycle is proceeding as expected.   

The xrdp package version tagged 0.9.x is basically reaching end of life.  This version of the package will be maintained and available for some time but no active maintenance will be performed. Only security fixes will be made available.   

xRDP team is slowly moving to a new xRDP/xorgrxrdp package version i.e. 0.10 which is still in beta/pre-release stage.  We are expecting to see in a few months indeed a new release for this package version. 

Please note that the xRDP package shipping with your Ubuntu Operating system might not be the latest release version.  You will need to check if some updates would be made available by the OS provider.  If no updates are provided, you might want to build from sources and deploy the latest version of the xRDP Package…  

The xrdp-installer script version 1.4.9 could be used to remove and install the latest version of xrdp package.  The script 1.4.9 has not been tested yet against xrdp 0.9.25 package but it should be working as expected.

A lot of changes seems to be coming around remote desktop technologies in Linux… Stay tuned…

Till Next time 

See ya

 

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