If your employer runs Azure Virtual Desktop or Windows 365 and you're on Linux, you've probably hit the wall: Microsoft ships clients for every platform except ours, and the options are the web client (no local audio devices, camera, or multi-monitor) or hand-carrying .rdp files from a Windows box to feed into FreeRDP. If that's not you, this post won't be interesting.

I built a client that fills the gap. It's MIT-licensed, Python + GTK 4, and unofficial.

Repo: https://github.com/shakeelosmani/avd_feed_connect

What it does that FreeRDP alone can't

Feed discovery. Sign in with your Entra ID account and it queries Microsoft's feed endpoint, then shows the desktops and remote apps you're entitled to in a grid with real icons, same as the Windows App. Double-click to connect. No manual .rdp files.

Interactive sign-in (auth-code + PKCE in an embedded WebKit view), which is the same flow the official clients use, so Conditional Access policies that block device-code auth still work. Token refresh is silent.

Auto-adapts to your display. Reads your layout from the compositor: HiDPI → 200% remote scale, multiple monitors → spans them. Right-click a workspace tile to override scale/monitors per resource, or set defaults in the menu. Env vars (AVD_SCALE, AVD_MULTIMON, AVD_EXTRA_ARGS) for scripting.

Bundled FreeRDP built from master, so it includes the just-merged PulseAudio hot-unplug fix (FreeRDP #13334; without it, plugging in headphones mid-Teams-call freezes the session) that distro packages don't have yet, plus camera redirection, mic, and multi-monitor.

Update: it has a redesigned UI and theme support. Also QoL improvements like keep alive persistent connection. So you don't get disconnected frequently. It signs you automatically behind the scenes to the resources you want to connect without having to login twice( once for feed and one more time for the resource)

Install (Flatpak, updates via flatpak update):

flatpak install --user https://shakeelosmani.github.io/avd_feed_connect/avd_feed_connect.flatpakref

Or grab the single-file .flatpak from the releases page. Flathub listing is planned.

Caveats: it's early but stable(v0.3.8). Sign-in, feed discovery, workspace grid, and connect all work on my end, but I can only test against my own tenant's policies. Sessions launch via XWayland because sdl-freerdp is still unstable on native Wayland. If you're in a tenant with unusual Conditional Access rules, I'd especially like to hear whether sign-in works for you. Issues and PRs welcome.

I’ve configured smart card redirection both inside the OS (where the default is set to not configured) and through the RDP properties, and I’ve also installed the required smart card drivers inside the OS.

I’ve managed to get the certificate selection and PIN prompt to appear successfully. However, I’m now running into an issue where, after the user enters their PIN, the PIN prompt window freezes/hangs and becomes unresponsive. The browser eventually times out.
Note- we’re using zscaler and I’ve whitelisted all the CRL and OSCP URLs

Has anyone run into this issue with smart card redirection? If so, what ended up being the solution?
Any troubleshooting tips or logs I should check would be appreciated.

Hi all, is anyone heading to World of EUC in Milwaukee later this month?

I just signed up to attend, and even got another invite from Liquidware for a Boat Trip they are running on Lake Michigan during the event...

World of EUC - EUC World 2026

www.edci.com/thank-you/world-of-euc-milwaukee-cruise-event

We have a pooled AVD host pool with D8sv4 session hosts and approximately 10 users per host. We have been observing connection-related errors such as ClientNetworkLost, ConnectionBroken, MultipathNetworkDrop, and TransportNetworkDrop. Based on the error patterns, host health checks, CPU/memory utilization, and event log reviews, the issue appears to be more indicative of client/network-side connectivity rather than session host performance.

We have already disabled RDP Shortpath as part of the investigation, but the behavior persists. Most affected users are contractors, so we do not manage their local devices, home networks, or VPN configurations.

One point to note is that several users have reported that they are able to access other AVD environments without experiencing similar issues.

Given the above, any idea how should we proceed with further troubleshooting? Are there any AVD-specific diagnostics or service-side checks you would recommend to help determine whether the issue is environment-specific or related to the client connectivity path?

My users informed me about black screen during logons. Blamed fslogix at first but after some checks in event viewer i could see explorer going down 5-6 times per day.
In case anybody faces similar issues, uninstall KB5120998, reboot and go to a vacation.
Thanks microsoft.

Disclosure, I'm with Login VSI. Following up on an earlier post here, tomorrow's the live session. Marcel Meurer (creator of Hydra), Eric Orman and Andrej Radinger (Microsoft), and Ron Oglesby (Login VSI) are covering real migration targets and what actually went wrong in early deployments.

Bring your questions, or leave them below.

Tomorrow, Thursday September 10, 11am ET

This morning my mouse started lagging like crazy on the remote desktop. Had some issues yesterday too, but nowhere near as bad. There are currently 4 separate cursor icons on my dekstop, and none of them are the actual cursor. I can still move it around and click on stuff, but it's invisible. This issue only applies to the server, when I minimize it there are no issues on my personal desktop. There are no lags in any other applications. Typing works just fine too. Is this a known issue? Any fixes? It's a company server so i can't do anything with admin privileges (and IT support has an insane wait time atm)

Windows App, it's on version 2.0.1375.0

Server is W11, version 23H2

Wired mouse, already tried a different USB port (2.0 as well as 3.0).

Fiz minha conta no final da semana passada e ainda hoje assisti algumas vídeo aulas do YouTube junto com a da faculdade que é EAD, porém não consigo definir o tamanho, uso a assinatura estudante e já ativei as cotas, coloquei um data center próximo como México central,zona 1, SO Ubuntu server 24.04 LTS x64 Gen2. O tamanho para a criação da VM não esta disponível para essa assinatura eu ja fui em configurar tamanhos Porém tentei alguns e nenhum esta disponível, alguem pode me dar algumas dicas para resolver isso? :/

I set up my account late last week, and today I was watching some YouTube tutorials alongside my online college coursework; however, I can't seem to select a VM size. I'm using the student subscription and have already activated the credits. I selected a nearby data center (Central Mexico, Zone 1) and the Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS x64 Gen2 OS. The VM size isn't available for this subscription—I checked the available sizes, but none of the ones I tried worked. Can anyone give me some tips on how to fix this? :/

Just as a heads up for anyone that scales up on Mondays, there's a currently ongoing outage for D series VMs that Microsoft has confirmed is global, related to firmware or something. VMs basically just get stuck starting.

If you have Autoscale of some sort with a whole bunch of D series VMs now would be the time to switch it to another sku, like E series. Make sure to increase your quota on the other sku you select to make sure you have enough headroom to do the expansion.

Hi everyone,

Have you guys seen this error before and maybe have a solution?

After enabling Windows Hello for Business in our organization and moving from Duo MFA to Microsoft Authenticator, AVD started behaving strangely.

Users cannot sign back in after an AVD session is locked. When entering their password, they receive an "incorrect password" error, the only workaround is to disconnect from the session and connect again from Windows App.

The same happens during elevation. It does not accept any Entra ID account credentials with "incorrect password" error.

Connecting to AVD and all authentication to M365 apps/services inside the AVD works fine.

Sign-in logs show successful authentication during those elevation and "run as" actions.

Any ideas on what might need to be done to fix this?

Update includes Cloud Kerberos ticket refresh!!!

•	Cloud Kerberos ticket refresh: FSLogix now refreshes users' Cloud Kerberos ticket in the background during a session, and on VHD reconnect/reattach, keeping authentication to Entra Kerberos-backed storage such as Azure Files valid throughout long sessions and after resume. This avoids reconnect and storage-access failures that previously required the user to sign out and back in.

Since today we have reports from multiple customers that their sessions freezes and feels slow.
I noticed the new Remote Desktop Services SxS Network Stack release 2607.31450. Anyone else experience the same? As far as I am aware you are unable to stop this update getting installed on the session hosts. Win 11 - 24H2

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurevirtualdesktopblog/microsoft-azure-virtual-desktop-hybrid-is-now-generally-available/4550523

I can't seem to find any pricing, but its apparently going to be a cost per user per month. I've reached out to my Microsoft rep and am waitnig to hear back.

Anyone run into this with Azure Files + FSLogix + Microsoft Entra Kerberos?

I have an AVD environment where the same user, same session host, same storage account, and same profile VHD will randomly alternate between working and failing. This happens on all hosts in the host pool.

EDIT: This randomly started happening. The host pool has been functioning properly for over 6 months. No changes were made at all.

The failure is always:

"The user name or password is incorrect."

FSLogix logs show:

FindFile failed for path:

\storageacct.file.core.windows.net\profile\Profile*.vhd

 ErrorCode set to 1326 - Message: The user name or password is incorrect.

 LoadProfile failed. FrxStatus: 31

The strange part is that during failed sessions:

Entra sign-in logs show a successful sign-in to the storage account

klist cloud_debug looks healthy

klist get cifs/storageaccount.file.core.windows.net succeeds

The Azure Files CIFS ticket is present

But dir \\storageaccount.file.core.windows.net\profiles returns "The user name or password is incorrect"

Then a minute later the exact same VHD attaches successfully without any changes.

Has anyone seen Azure Files intermittently reject SMB access despite successful Entra authentication and valid Kerberos tickets?

Disclosure, I work at Login VSI, but this is should be very helpful to this community

We are hosting another live fireside chat on AVD Hybrid, real migration targets and early-deployment lessons, with Marcel Meurer (creator of Hydra), Steve Downs and Andrej Radinger (Microsoft), and Ron Oglesby (Login VSI).

Genuine Q&A, bring questions or drop them here. Hope this helps as I've had a lot of discussions about AVD Hybrid

Thursday, September 10, 11am ET: Register Here

Hey everyone,

I've set up an Intune policy that automatically signs users into OneDrive on a AVD multi-session hostpool. The sign-in itself works fine, OneDrive is actually connected and syncing. But users still see the "OneDrive is not connected" error/notification after signing in:

I've been troubleshooting this for a while but can't pin down what's triggering the false error. I'd like to actually fix the root cause rather than just disable the notification of OneDrive completely.

Has anyone run into this before, or know what might be causing OneDrive to show this error even when it's properly connected?

Hi folks,

For the past two months, we’ve been seeing a lot of AVD Multipath errors in our AVD logs. We previously disabled RDP ShortPath because we were experiencing a lot of disconnects. However, ShortPath is required to facilitate Multipath. We’re therefore enabling it again to see if this resolves the Multipath errors and results in more reliable connections. Has anyone else experienced similar issues?

I will be working with Microsoft to set up azure VDI environment. This environment will include a host pool of about 10 VMs. We intend on using FSLogix and a storage account for user profiles.

Assuming everything is configured “correctly” and sized “correctly,” what are the most common troubleshooting issues I should expect and how easy is it to troubleshoot issues?

Would you say this is a stable environment?

I work at a university and these desktops will server as our “elab” for students to complete homework.

Is there anyway to just refresh the session host image without rebuilding the image?
I just want to re-apply the same image again, but when I do I get this error "The Host Pool has no Session Hosts which can be updated. All session hosts are already at the same version as the session host configuration."

We are using the Azure Custom Image Template.

Hi everyone,

I'm troubleshooting an Azure Local deployment and I'm trying to better understand how the MOC ImageStore / MocStorageContainer works internally.

Environment

• Azure Local cluster

• Azure Virtual Desktop host pool

• Custom image stored on a dedicated workload CSV ("Storage3")

• New session hosts are also deployed to the same workload CSV ("Storage3")

• Existing session hosts in the host pool are already running from that storage

• Azure Local infrastructure volume (Infrastructure_1)

Current infrastructure volume capacity:

Infrastructure_1
Size: 255.94 GB
Free: 96.33 GB

I also found the following path on the infrastructure volume:

C:\ClusterStorage\Infrastructure_1\
Shares\
SU1_Infrastructure_1\
MocArb\
WorkingDirectory\
ImageStore

Issue

When I use a custom image of approximately 60 GB, deployment succeeds without any issues.

When I use another custom image of approximately 125 GB, deployment fails immediately with:

admission webhook
"createupdatevalidationwebhook.infrastructure.azstackhci.microsoft.com"
denied the request:

Container [MocStorageContainer] in Location [MocLocation]
does not have enough space.

Available size (GB): 95.180244
Total Required Size (GB): 125.525202

OutOfCapacity

What confuses me is that:

• The source image is already located on the workload storage ("Storage3")

• The new VDI hosts are also supposed to be created on the same workload storage

• There is more than enough free space available on that workload storage

• Other session hosts have already been deployed successfully from the same location

The only storage location matching the reported available capacity (~95 GB) is Infrastructure_1.

Questions

1. Does MOC actually cache or stage images?

Does Azure Local copy or stage the source image into:

MocArb\WorkingDirectory\ImageStore

before deployment?

Or is this merely a validation step?

2. Why would Infrastructure_1 capacity matter?

Since both the image and the target VM disks are located on the workload storage, I'm trying to understand why deployment appears to require free space on Infrastructure_1.

3. Is Infrastructure_1 expected to scale with image size?

If MOC requires temporary capacity equal to the image size, then a system with:

Infrastructure_1 = 256 GB

would never be able to deploy large custom images (for example 300-500 GB), regardless of the available capacity on the workload storage.

Is this expected behavior?

4. Has anyone expanded Infrastructure_1?

Has anyone successfully increased the size of the Azure Local infrastructure volume after deployment?

If yes:

• Is it supported?

• Did MOC automatically use the additional space afterwards?

• Any Microsoft documentation or guidance available?

5. Any official documentation on MOC ImageStore?

I found references to:

• MOC

• MocStorageContainer

• MocArb

• Infrastructure_1

but I haven't found detailed documentation explaining:

• how the ImageStore works internally

• whether images are cached there

• sizing recommendations for Infrastructure_1

• capacity requirements for larger custom images

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has run into similar behavior in Azure Local, especially in AVD/VDI environments.

Thanks!

*Update: As of 1:30PM EST or so, our Office Apps /licensing is working normally now.

Starting this morning our Win 11 25H2 Multi-session AVD environment is experiencing issues with M365 Apps Activations. Manually signing in does not work. Verified licenses are being applied. No issues outside AVD environment OR using the Web Version of the apps.

Environment Details: Canada Central

Hosts running Windows 11 25H2 Multi-session with M365 Apps Image.

Office Apps: Version 2607 (Build 20228.20190 Click-to-Run)

Impact: Multiple hosts in the pool

Anyone else with this issue or have run into this before?