How to display window decorations on a virtual desktop?

[source0848]

I have a small Linux headless server, that I use for personal stuff; in order to use use desktop apps (primarily, Firefox), I use NoMachine’s virtual desktop.

Something that I’ve noticed is that there are no window decorations in virtual desktop mode, which could be fine, however, in some cases, it breaks some application.

For example, if NoMachine starts the virtual desktop with a low resolution, and Firefox is started, the application (or window manage, I don’t know) will store the new window size, and on the next sessions, even if I increase the desktop resolution, the Firefox window will stay small.

Another side effect (quite ironic) is that the NoMachine settings window doesn’t support the Ctrl+W key binding, so if I open such window, at least by default, it’s impossible to close, because Alt+F4 will close the NoMachine client window.

Is there any way to display window decorations?

[Britgirl]

We aren’t aware of any of the issues that you described on the supported distributions and desktop environments. Can you tell us what distro you are using and what DE is installed there? What is set in the DefaultDesktopCommand key in the node.cfg on the server?

What you can do is run:
grep ^Exec /usr/share/xsessions/* in a terminal and then use the output as the argument in the node.cfg DefaultDesktopCommand key as explained here: https://kb.nomachine.com/AR04K00667#2 (2. How to run a non-default virtual desktop environment).

[source0848]

Ah, I see. There is no DE installed, as it’s a headless server, so I presume that NoMachine installs a very minimal one, which doesn’t support functionalities like window decorations. I’ll install a DE, which will likely resolve the problem. Thanks!

[Britgirl]

NoMachine does not install any DE. A desktop environment is a requirement of being able to get a functional NoMachine installation. NoMachine is designed to work out-of-the-box on Linux headless machines provided a desktop environment is installed. NoMachine is able to detect when the X server is not running and run its own virtual display, which is an embedded X server.

Please consult https://kb.nomachine.com/AR03P00973 for more information on how to use NoMachine on a headless Linux 🙂

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