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title: Desktops
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# Desktops

Remote and on-device desktops: a VNC viewer, an RDP client, a GPU-accelerated
native Wayland compositor that runs inside Haven, and a multi-distro manager for
full Linux desktops on the phone. For the local *shell* side of the on-device
distros, see [Local Linux](local-linux.md).

## Desktop (VNC)

Remote desktop viewer with RFB 3.8 protocol support. Pinch-to-zoom, two-finger pan and scroll, single-finger drag for window management, soft keyboard with X11 KeySym mapping. Fullscreen mode with NoMachine-style corner hotspot for session controls. Connect directly or tunnel through SSH. Supports Raw, CopyRect, RRE, Hextile, and ZLib encodings. Security types: **None**, classic **VncAuth** (DES), and **VeNCrypt** (security type 19) with TLSPlain/X509Plain/TLSVnc/X509Vnc/TLSNone/X509None/Plain sub-types — connects to wayvnc, TigerVNC, libvncserver, x11vnc and other servers that require a username alongside a password, wrapping the socket in TLS after sub-type negotiation.

## Desktop (RDP)

Remote Desktop Protocol client built on [IronRDP](https://github.com/Devolutions/IronRDP) via UniFFI Kotlin bindings. Connects to Windows Remote Desktop, xrdp (Linux), and GNOME Remote Desktop. **EGFX (MS-RDPEGFX) graphics-pipeline support** — ClearCodec and RemoteFX Progressive decoders light up the fast graphics path on modern Windows (verified against Windows Server 2025), with a slow-path fallback for servers that don't negotiate it. Pinch-to-zoom, pan, keyboard with scancode mapping, mouse input. SSH tunnel support with auto-connect through saved SSH profiles. Saved connection profiles with optional stored password.

## Native Wayland Desktop

GPU-accelerated Wayland compositor (labwc) running natively inside Haven. Full interactive terminal with keyboard input, mouse interaction, server-side window decorations, pinch-to-zoom, and fullscreen mode with corner overlay menu. The GPU pipeline renders via GLES2 on the device's GPU (AHardwareBuffer allocator, ASurfaceControl zero-copy presentation). Native Wayland clients can render 3D content — includes a built-in GLES2 benchmark (rotating lit cube at 60fps on Mali-G715). **Display-scale / resolution control** — pick the compositor's output resolution from the toolbar or fullscreen menu; it reflows windows at the new resolution rather than just visually zooming. Configurable shell (/bin/sh, bash, zsh, fish) and shared keyboard toolbar (Esc, Tab, Ctrl, Alt, arrows, function keys, plus a Super/Mod4 key for compositor keybinds). External Wayland clients can connect via Shizuku (symlinks the socket to `/data/local/tmp/haven-wayland/`). No root required — runs in PRoot with an Alpine Linux rootfs.

## Local Desktops (multi-distro manager)

A **Desktop → Manage** view installs and runs full Linux desktops on-device via PRoot, with no root. Pick a distro — **Alpine** (APK), **Debian 12** (APT), **Arch Linux ARM** (PACMAN), or **Void** (XBPS) — and install them side-by-side; each carries its native package manager. For each installed distro you can install, start, and stop desktop environments, open a shell into it, and read a Room-backed install log that names the layer that broke if a package install fails.

Desktop environments:

- **X11 (via Xvnc)** — Xfce4 or Openbox, each on its own VNC port, viewed through the in-app VNC client.
- **Nested Wayland (via wayvnc)** — a headless wlroots compositor inside the rootfs, surfaced over VNC. **Sway** is the supported, working option. Hyprland and niri are offered but GPU-limited: their renderers (aquamarine / smithay) are GLES-only with no software fallback, and the Android GPU isn't driveable by Mesa inside PRoot, so they can't currently initialise a backend (tracked on #162). For a GPU-accelerated local desktop, use the Native Wayland Desktop above.

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