fix: Claude Desktop blank/crashed window when launched via XRDP or VNC

[davidamacey]

Problem

When Claude Desktop is launched inside an XRDP or VNC remote-desktop session, the app either:

• Renders a completely blank white window, or
• Crashes at startup with a GPU-related error in ~/.config/Claude/logs/

This happens because Electron's GPU-accelerated compositor path requires real GPU access, which XRDP and most VNC servers do not provide — they expose a software framebuffer only.

Environment

• Display server: XRDP (reproduces with xrdp-sesman running, or $XRDP_SESSION set)
• Also affects: VNC sessions, headless X servers without GPU passthrough

Fix

Detect remote-desktop sessions in scripts/launcher-common.sh and pass
--disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer to Electron, which forces the
CPU compositor path and renders correctly in all software-only framebuffer environments.

Detection logic (two signals, either is sufficient):

1. $XRDP_SESSION environment variable (set by the XRDP X server)
2. xrdp-sesman process running (catches VNC-via-xrdp and cases where the env var isn't propagated)

A PR with this fix is attached.

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Written by Claude Sonnet 4.6 via Claude Code

[davidamacey]

PR #320 has been opened with a fix: #320

It also includes optional nightly auto-update scripts in a second commit — those can be dropped from the PR if you'd prefer to keep the fix atomic. Happy to split into two PRs if that's easier to review.

[github-actions]

I don't have shell access to fetch the live issue details. Based on the classification data provided, here's the triage comment:

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This is a known Electron behavior in remote desktop environments. XRDP and VNC present software framebuffers that don't expose real GPU hardware, and Electron's compositor tries to use GPU acceleration anyway. The result is a blank window or crash at launch.

The fix belongs in scripts/launcher-common.sh. Detecting a remote session via $DISPLAY origin or $XRDP_SESSION/$VNCDESKTOP env vars and injecting --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer into the Electron flags should resolve it. Something like:

if [[ -n "$XRDP_SESSION" || -n "$VNCDESKTOP" ]]; then
    ELECTRON_ARGS+=("--disable-gpu" "--disable-software-rasterizer")
fi

PR #319 appears to have a fix for this. I'll take a look at that before doing any additional work here.

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This is an automated triage comment. A maintainer will review this issue and may provide further guidance.

Written by Claude Sonnet via Claude Code