Context menus not visible on Altium Designer

[Kikkiu17]

Hello, I installed Altium Designer and when I open it through KDE's applauncher, context menus don't show up. Though, if I first open the Windows view and from there launch Altium Designer, it works properly.
This is what I mean:

not_ok.mp4

This is directly inside Windows, as it should be:

ok.mp4

I'm running FreeRDP 3.18.0, on the latest version of WinApps. I'm on Fedora 43 KDE on Wayland and this is winapps.conf:

##################################
#   WINAPPS CONFIGURATION FILE   #
##################################

# INSTRUCTIONS
# - Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.
# - Empty lines are ignored.
# - Lines starting with '#' are ignored.
# - All characters following a '#' are ignored.

# [WINDOWS USERNAME]
RDP_USER="user"

# [WINDOWS PASSWORD]
# NOTES:
# - If using FreeRDP v3.9.0 or greater, you *have* to set a password
RDP_PASS="username"

# [WINDOWS DOMAIN]
# DEFAULT VALUE: '' (BLANK)
RDP_DOMAIN=""

# [WINDOWS IPV4 ADDRESS]
# NOTES:
# - If using 'libvirt', 'RDP_IP' will be determined by WinApps at runtime if left unspecified.
# DEFAULT VALUE:
# - 'docker': '127.0.0.1'
# - 'podman': '127.0.0.1'
# - 'libvirt': '' (BLANK)
RDP_IP="127.0.0.1"

# [VM NAME]
# NOTES:
# - Only applicable when using 'libvirt'
# - The libvirt VM name must match so that WinApps can determine VM IP, start the VM, etc.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'RDPWindows'
VM_NAME="RDPWindows"

# [WINAPPS BACKEND]
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'docker'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'docker'
# - 'podman'
# - 'libvirt'
# - 'manual'
WAFLAVOR="docker"

# [DISPLAY SCALING FACTOR]
# NOTES:
# - If an unsupported value is specified, a warning will be displayed.
# - If an unsupported value is specified, WinApps will use the closest supported value.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '100'
# VALID VALUES:
# - '100'
# - '140'
# - '180'
RDP_SCALE="100"

# [MOUNTING REMOVABLE PATHS FOR FILES]
# NOTES:
# - By default, `udisks` (which you most likely have installed) uses /run/media for mounting removable devices.
#   This improves compatibility with most desktop environments (DEs).
# ATTENTION: The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) recommends /media instead. Verify your system's configuration.
# - To manually mount devices, you may optionally use /mnt.
# REFERENCE: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Udisks#Mount_to_/media
REMOVABLE_MEDIA="/run/media"

# [ADDITIONAL FREERDP FLAGS & ARGUMENTS]
# NOTES:
# - You can try adding /network:lan to these flags in order to increase performance, however, some users have faced issues with this.
#   If this does not work or if it does not work without the flag, you can try adding /nsc and /gfx.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '/cert:tofu /sound /microphone +home-drive'
# VALID VALUES: See https://github.com/awakecoding/FreeRDP-Manuals/blob/master/User/FreeRDP-User-Manual.markdown
RDP_FLAGS="/cert:tofu /sound /microphone +home-drive"

# [DEBUG WINAPPS]
# NOTES:
# - Creates and appends to ~/.local/share/winapps/winapps.log when running WinApps.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'true'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'true'
# - 'false'
DEBUG="true"

# [AUTOMATICALLY PAUSE WINDOWS]
# NOTES:
# - This is currently INCOMPATIBLE with 'manual'.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'off'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'on'
# - 'off'
AUTOPAUSE="off"

# [AUTOMATICALLY PAUSE WINDOWS TIMEOUT]
# NOTES:
# - This setting determines the duration of inactivity to tolerate before Windows is automatically paused.
# - This setting is ignored if 'AUTOPAUSE' is set to 'off'.
# - The value must be specified in seconds (to the nearest 10 seconds e.g., '30', '40', '50', etc.).
# - For RemoteApp RDP sessions, there is a mandatory 20-second delay, so the minimum value that can be specified here is '20'.
# - Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/terminal-services-remoteapp-8482-session-termination-logic/ba-p/246566
# DEFAULT VALUE: '300'
# VALID VALUES: >=20
AUTOPAUSE_TIME="300"

# [FREERDP COMMAND]
# NOTES:
# - WinApps will attempt to automatically detect the correct command to use for your system.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '' (BLANK)
# VALID VALUES: The command required to run FreeRDPv3 on your system (e.g., 'xfreerdp', 'xfreerdp3', etc.).
FREERDP_COMMAND="xfreerdp"

# [TIMEOUTS]
# NOTES:
# - These settings control various timeout durations within the WinApps setup.
# - Increasing the timeouts is only necessary if the corresponding errors occur.
# - Ensure you have followed all the Troubleshooting Tips in the error message first.

# PORT CHECK
# - The maximum time (in seconds) to wait when checking if the RDP port on Windows is open.
# - Corresponding error: "NETWORK CONFIGURATION ERROR" (exit status 13).
# DEFAULT VALUE: '5'
PORT_TIMEOUT="5"

# RDP CONNECTION TEST
# - The maximum time (in seconds) to wait when testing the initial RDP connection to Windows.
# - Corresponding error: "REMOTE DESKTOP PROTOCOL FAILURE" (exit status 14).
# DEFAULT VALUE: '30'
RDP_TIMEOUT="30"

# APPLICATION SCAN
# - The maximum time (in seconds) to wait for the script that scans for installed applications on Windows to complete.
# - Corresponding error: "APPLICATION QUERY FAILURE" (exit status 15).
# DEFAULT VALUE: '60'
APP_SCAN_TIMEOUT="60"

# WINDOWS BOOT
# - The maximum time (in seconds) to wait for the Windows VM to boot if it is not running, before attempting to launch an application.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '120'
BOOT_TIMEOUT="120"

# FREERDP RAIL HIDEF
# - This option controls the value of the `hidef` option passed to the /app parameter of the FreeRDP command.
# - Setting this option to 'off' may resolve window misalignment issues related to maximized windows.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'on'
HIDEF="on"

[phatpaul]

Not an answer, but curious if you got Altium Deisgner to work with winapps. How is the 3d performance?
I had pretty sluggish 3d rendering of AD 25.8.1 with tiny11 2311 x64 on Virtualbox 7.0 on Ubuntu 24.04, (Xeon(R) W-2135 CPU, Radeon PRO WX 8100/8200) I enabled the "3D acceleration checkbox on Virtualbox.
Anyone know if it could be any better?

[Kikkiu17]

When using AD through the Windows desktop performance was pretty bad, as there isn't (to my knowledge) any immediate way to enable GPU passthrough/hardware acceleration through winapps. I followed the docker tutorial to install the VM, so probably using libvirt and enabling GPU passthrough would've made the situation better. In that case though you'd have to just use the Windows desktop to avoid the problems I faced, so at that point it's just faster to use virt-manager, enable GPU passthorugh and use Looking Glass for the best performance, which is what I did. Obviously if you don't have two GPUs this is not a solution.

[phatpaul]

Appreciate the tips! Looking Glass looks interesting. Now to figure out how to put in a 2nd GPU...

BTW, I also tried WinBoat and was impressed by how quickly and easily it installed windows in the VM. But I got the same performance issues since it also has no 3d accel yet.

[jn-simonnet]

I am running in the exact same problem.

I have reverse-engineered the xfreerdp commands winapps and winboat launch (ps ax |grep winapps or ps ax | grep winboat), tried all the possible options of freerdp (+dynamic-resolution, .floatbar +f with no change.
From this work , I created the following shell script (sorry shell script attachment do not work, so I had to insert spaces to replace #!/bin/bash by # ! /bin.bash (it breaks the magic number); easy to restore to get a working script
script.txt

I also tried adding the application with the official way (create a new altiumdesigner dir in /usr/local/bin/winapps-src/apps. Got the same result.

With Garmin BaseCamp, I get another type of problem: dropdown menus float around in the application window. Dropdown menus sometimes open at the right place, sometimes open at the center of window. Opening full screen does not work.

What puzzles me is that it works properly for native windows apps.
Of course, everything works properly when opening apps from the windows desktop.

There is another path I am going to try : use my reverse-engineered xfreerdp command file with winboat to see if we have the same issue.
I will also check with running xfreerdp from Linux to run the apps on a native Windows machine.

If both cases display the same behaviour, then it means we have a freerdp issue.
Will let you know my experiment resuts.

[jn-simonnet]

Some news on my further investigations :

• The issue also exists with WinBoat, exact same behaviour
• It also exists with xfreerdp3 accessing a VM, however the Basecamp issue with floating menus is much better, though not totally absent

I am yet to check if the issue also exists with a native (non VM, non-container) installation.
Another test is to perform a test with the Microsoft rdp client (from a Windows PC) accessing the VM. If the issue disappears, then we confirm that this is a freerdp issue.

[oskardotglobal]

It is confirmed this is a freerdp issue. Those context windows are probably implemented like floating windows, and freerdp hates floating windows.