lamco-rdp-server 1.4.5 released: Native Wayland RDP server adds real multitouch input
lamco-rdp-server, a Wayland-native Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) server built in Rust, releases version 1.4.5 today. This release adds real multitouch input over RDP's own Input Extension channel on GNOME and KDE, substantially improves desktop audio, and turns on hardware-accelerated video encoding wherever a VA-API driver is present, the audio and video work landing across every Wayland desktop the server supports.
Product page: lamco.ai/products/lamco-rdp-server. Source and releases: github.com/lamco-admin/lamco-rdp-server.
Other Linux remote-desktop tools run on X11 directly, add Wayland support onto an X11-first design, or work only inside one desktop's own compositor. lamco-rdp-server is Wayland-first and desktop-agnostic, built to reach essentially every Wayland desktop in production use today: Memory-safe by construction since it's written in Rust, with no X11 anywhere in its path, and covering GNOME, KDE, the wlroots family of compositors (Sway, Hyprland, River, Wayfire, labwc), and COSMIC, each through its own purpose-built strategy rather than one generic approach applied everywhere. It has shipped steadily since the product's debut in January.
What's new in 1.4.5
The headline addition is real multitouch input on GNOME and KDE: Touch contacts from an RDP
client now come through as genuine touch, RDP's own Input Extension (MS-RDPEI) tracked through
its own down, hover, and engaged state machine, instead of being flattened into mouse clicks.
It travels the libei input path, which today reaches GNOME and KDE (the wlroots family and
COSMIC use a different input path for now and don't get touch yet). It's gated behind a setting
(input.enable_touch, off by default) while it earns more mileage in the field, but the effect
is real: A tablet or touchscreen client can now work a GNOME or KDE desktop as touch, not as a
simulated pointer.
Also in this release:
- Audio support is substantially improved: Desktop sound now streams to the client in real time, correctly pitched and staying in sync with video, on every desktop the server supports.
- GNOME and COSMIC sessions are both more stable, from one shared fix to the capture library both desktops depend on: A disconnect no longer risks taking the whole server down.
- Video looks better and costs less CPU wherever a VA-API-capable GPU is available: Hardware- accelerated encoding is now active for EGFX H.264, with an automatic, invisible fallback to software on machines without a compatible GPU path.
- Watching video inside a GNOME session no longer freezes the remote picture, the single-monitor case most people hit day to day.
- The client now draws a real, native-looking cursor instead of a generic system pointer baked into the video, on whichever desktop it's connected to.
Built on IronRDP, and feeding back into it
lamco-rdp-server is written in Rust on IronRDP, Devolutions' open-source RDP stack. Lamco is the largest contributor to IronRDP outside Devolutions itself by merged pull requests, with more than 170 to date, working toward making it the strongest RDP toolkit available on Linux. Several of those pull requests landed the codec primitives, ClearCodec, RemoteFX Progressive, and mixed-codec-per-frame sends, that the next release is built on.
What's next: multicodec dispatch
The next milestone on the roadmap is 1.5.0, reserved for multicodec dispatch: Choosing a codec per screen region instead of one codec for the whole frame, the same composition Windows and Azure Virtual Desktop already run in production today. The practical effect is sharp, lossless text sitting next to smoothly compressed video in the same frame, at a fraction of the bandwidth either alone would cost if the whole screen were forced through one codec. The codec primitives for it are already upstream in IronRDP, through lamco-rdp-server's own contributions. What's left is the decision layer: Teaching the dispatcher to read signals Linux's compositor architecture exposes natively, like per-region damage tracking and content-type hints, that a Windows RDP host can only infer from inside its own single window-manager process.
Editions and licensing
lamco-rdp-server ships in two forms: A Community Edition, published directly by Lamco Development LLC as sandboxed Flatpak and Snap builds, is free to use in production. Native packages, through AUR, RPM Fusion, OBS, and Debian, carry the same source-available license, the Business Source License 1.1, and stay free for non-profits, single-server-instance use, and non-commercial educational or research use. Use outside those categories needs a commercial license. Every release converts to the Apache License 2.0 on its own future date; 1.4.5's is 2029-06-01.
Try it
lamco-rdp-server 1.4.5 is available now. Grab a build from GitHub releases or the product page, point an RDP client at it, and connect to a real Linux desktop from wherever you are.