azlinuxdesktopvm

Linux desktop VM on Azure Tutorial

View the Project on GitHub frkim/azlinuxdesktopvm

Walkthrough: Setup a Linux Desktop VM on Azure

This page explains how to setup a Mate desktop on Azure Linux VM.

alt text

I prefer Linux MATE desktop environment compared to GNOME 3 for performance reason in particular with remote display(less animations and chrome).

Update (03/26 2021): you can provision an Ubuntu Linux version 20.04. In that case, just go to Step #6 Intall Mate Desktop

Step #0 - Provision a Linux Ubuntu VM on Azure

Quickstart: Create a Linux virtual machine in the Azure portal

Step #1 - Version

check the current version of Linux

lsb_release -a

Step #2 - Upgrade all installed packages

Type the following apt command to upgrade the installed packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt list --upgradable
sudo apt upgrade


sudo reboot

Step #3 - Remove all unused old kernels

Run the following to remove the unused old kernels:

sudo apt --purge autoremove

Make sure you install update-manager-core package After updating Ubuntu server, run the commands below to install update-manager-core if it is not already installed.

sudo apt install update-manager-core

Step #4 - Upgrade to latest LTS

Execute the following command:

sudo do-release-upgrade

Please note if you may be greeted with the following message: Checking for a new Ubuntu release There is no development version of an LTS available. To upgrade to the latest non-LTS develoment release set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades. In that case, pass the -d option to get the latest supported release forcefully:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Step 5 - Verification

Check the Linux version:

lsb_release -a

Step #6 - Intall Mate Desktop

See How to Install MATE Desktop in Ubuntu Linux

Choose LightDM instead of GDM3

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop

Step #7 - Install RDP

sudo apt-get -q=2 -y install xrdp
sudo service xrdp restart

Step#8 - Linux Software Components

Docker

Docker Install Commands :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common	
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"

ignore the error about public key could not be validated.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce
sudo systemctl status docker
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}   #run docker as SUDO without typing sudo all the time, make sure to log out and login again to SSH

Azure CLI

Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) and 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) include an azure-cli package with version 2.0.81 provided by the universe repository. This package is outdated and not recommended. If this package is installed, remove the package before continuing by running the command sudo apt remove azure-cli -y && sudo apt autoremove -y.

curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

VS Code

sudo snap install --classic code # or code-insiders

More information here: Visual Studio Code on Linux - Installation

Git

sudo apt install git-all

kubectl Setup

az aks install-cli

Helm

curl https://baltocdn.com/helm/signing.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https --yes
echo "deb https://baltocdn.com/helm/stable/debian/ all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/helm-stable-debian.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install helm

Step #9 - Client Software

MobaXTerm is a powerfull remote access software

Step #10 - Misc

On Linux VM configuration, add network port rule to open the RDP protocol with a minimal IP range (use your own public IP instead of ‘Any’) Add RDP rule

For a more convinient access add a Static IP to the VM Add IP addresses Then instead of using the IP address which could change at every desallocation you’ll able to use a dns name like ‘mylinuxworkstation.westeurope.cloudapp.azure.com’