xrdp shows blank screen on ubuntu 16.04

The quick solution is to install xfce4 package

Installing the xfce4 Desktop environment

In the Terminal console; type the following command

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4

Configure xrdp to use xfce desktop environment

At this stage, you have to configure your Ubuntu machine in order for xrdp to know that the xfce desktop will be used instead of the Unity or Gnome (which are not working anymore in Ubuntu). To configure this, from the terminal console, you will issue the following command

echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession

Restart the xrdp service by issuing the following command

sudo service xrdp restart

Test your xrdp connection

At this stage, you should have a basic xrdp working solution. When I say basic, I mean that you can indeed connect to your remote Ubuntu machine but if you disconnect your session and try to connect again, you will each time open a new session. (Read below section in this post to see how you can reconnect to the same session)

To test your xrdp solution, find the ip address of your linux machine (or use the name if you have DNS Infrastructure in place). To find the ip address, issue the command

hostname -I

Now go to your windows machine, start remote Desktop client and enter the ip address/name of your ubuntu machine

You should see then the login screen of xrdp presented to you. Note that, at this screen (and because we have not configured keyboard layout yet), the keyboard layout is set to English by default.

Enter your username and password and Press OK

You will see a dialog box showing the login process

If everything is configured correctly,you should see your xfce desktop loading and you should be able to perform you work through this desktop environment.

Reference article: http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=5305