Access Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) from Linux

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), formerly Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offered by Microsoft. It can serve as a safe alternative to using virtual private network (VPN) on a personal device.

Both Windows and macOS have official native clients for AVD/WVD. Currently, there is no official clients on Linux. AVD uses rdpw files which cannot be used on popular Linux RDP clients such as Remmina.

Thankfully, the latest FreeRDP now supports authenticating to AVD. See Issue 6529 and FAQ

Here is how I got this to work on my Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

Install FreeRDP

FreeRDP 3.0-beta or above is needed. I followed this wiki to install a nightly build.

Add a new source file

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/freerdp-nightly.list

Add the following. DIST should be the actual distro name, e.g., jammy

deb http://pub.freerdp.com/repositories/deb/DIST/ freerdp-nightly main

Grab the apt key

wget -O - http://pub.freerdp.com/repositories/ADD6BF6D97CE5D8D.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Install the nightly build

sudo apt update
sudo apt install freerdp-nightly

This installs freerdp to /opt/freerdp-nightly/bin/

Connect to AVD

Log into https://client.wvd.microsoft.com/arm/webclient/index.html

Get the rdpw file

Run the follow command line sh /opt/freerdp-nightly/bin/xfreerdp3 /path/to/rdpw.rdpw /gateway:type:arm /u:<username>

The FreeRDP FAQ indicates the following alternative command may be worth trying if the one above does not work.

freerdp <path to rdpw.rdpw> /gateway:type:arm /sec:aad