ADR 0006: Desktop backend selection
- Status: proposed — closed by the M2 spikes
- Date: 2026-09-15
Context
Section titled “Context”Remote desktop on Ubuntu 24.04 has two capture paths (X11 ximagesrc,
Wayland portals/PipeWire) and three injection paths (XTest, libei, uinput).
Unattended access after reboot is the make-or-break industrial requirement,
and the honest answer for Wayland portals is unknown until tested.
Options considered
Section titled “Options considered”Four combos (A: X11+XTest, B: X11+uinput, C: portals+libei, D: portals+uinput) — criteria, spike protocol, and the decision rule (unattended access is a hard gate; then lowest operational complexity; <20 ms p50 latency differences are noise) are specified in docs/07.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”Deferred to evidence. The DesktopBackend interface (docs/09) is designed
Wayland-first so whichever combo wins is swappable per deployment.
Consequences
Section titled “Consequences”M2 carries four small throwaway spikes; this ADR gains a findings appendix per spike and flips to accepted with the data attached.