Deploy Ubuntu 26.04 LXQt Desktop in Your Browser

Deploy and Host Ubuntu 26.04 LXQt Desktop with Railway

A light Ubuntu 26.04 LTS desktop with LXQt that you open in a browser tab. It comes with Chromium, the PCManFM-Qt file manager, QTerminal and FeatherPad, and needs less memory than KDE or XFCE. A generated password protects it, and your home directory (files, settings, browser profile) lives on a persistent volume.

About Hosting Ubuntu 26.04 LXQt Desktop

A browser desktop needs a display server, a desktop session, a streaming server, a login in front of it, and storage that outlives rebuilds. This community template uses the linuxserver.io image webtop (pinned release ubuntu-lxqt-8eee505a-ls6), which streams the desktop with Selkies over a single HTTPS WebSocket. Railway runs its own init as PID 1, which the image's s6-overlay init refuses to run under, so a small start script brings up the image's own services under s6 supervision instead. nginx requires a login on every page except /healthz. /config (the home directory) is a Railway volume.

Common Use Cases

• Work in a full Linux environment from any device with a browser, including managed work laptops
• A low-cost always-on Linux box when you mainly need a terminal, a file manager and a browser
• Open untrusted links or files in a cloud browser instead of on your own computer
• A ready Linux environment for training sessions, demos and support work

Dependencies for Ubuntu 26.04 LXQt Desktop Hosting

• One service built from a small Dockerfile on top of lscr.io/linuxserver/webtop (no database, no external API keys)
• A Railway volume mounted at /config for the home directory

Deployment Dependencies

• linuxserver/docker-webtop (ubuntu-lxqt branch)
• linuxserver/docker-baseimage-selkies
• Selkies configuration reference
• Selkies web client guide (sidebar, clipboard, files)
• Ubuntu releases

Implementation Details

Plan: Measured on Railway: about 0.35 to 0.45 GB of RAM with one browser session connected and no apps open, the lightest of these desktops. It runs within Trial's 1 GB; on Free's 0.5 GB it starts but has no room for a browser. Use Hobby and 2 GB or more for Chromium with several tabs.

First login

1. Wait for the deploy to turn healthy (the first build pulls a 1.1 GB image, so allow a few minutes).
2. Open the public URL. The browser asks for a login.
3. User ubuntu (or your CUSTOM_USER; letters, digits and . _ @ - only, otherwise it stays ubuntu), password = PASSWORD from the service Variables tab.
4. The desktop appears and resizes to your browser window. The Selkies side menu has the clipboard box, file upload and download, audio, keyboard and display settings.

Security

• The desktop never runs without a login. Basic auth is on in nginx at build time, and the service refuses to start if PASSWORD is empty or shorter than 8 characters (use 12 or more).
• Only a hash of the password is stored, and the password is removed from the environment before any desktop app starts.
• Requests from other websites are refused (Origin check in nginx and Selkies), so a page you visit cannot use your cached login to drive the desktop or upload files.
• The Linux user abc has passwordless sudo. Anyone with the password controls the whole container. The image's HARDEN_DESKTOP=true option disables sudo, terminals and the open-with tools for a locked-down desktop.
• Browsers keep basic-auth logins until they close. Use a private window on shared computers.

What persists

Everything in /config: documents, ~/Desktop, desktop settings, browser profiles and apps installed with proot-apps install {app} (proot-apps installs into the home directory). Packages installed with sudo apt install live in the image and reset on every redeploy. List them in the APT_PACKAGES variable or in ~/.config/railway-desktop/packages (one or more per line) and they are reinstalled in the background after each start (log: /var/log/railway-desktop/pkg-restore.log).

No GPU: software rendering

Railway has no GPUs. The desktop is drawn on the CPU (Mesa's software renderer), and Selkies encodes the video stream on the CPU. Office work, browsing and development tools run well; 3D apps, games and video editing will be slow. A busy screen costs CPU: lower the frame rate in the side menu, or set SELKIES_FRAMERATE, to save CPU.

Audio and clipboard

• Sound from desktop apps streams to your browser over the same WebSocket. Browsers only play it after you click in the page once.
• Text copy and paste works both ways. Chromium-based browsers ask for clipboard permission. In Firefox and Safari, paste through the clipboard box in the side menu.

Scaling and versions

The desktop is a single-user, volume-backed service: run one replica and scale it vertically. To upgrade, change the FROM line in services/desktop/Dockerfile to a newer release tag with its digest and redeploy. The home directory is kept.

Limits

No Docker inside the desktop (Railway runs no privileged containers), no WebRTC/UDP (the WebSocket stream is used instead), and running apps restart on every redeploy. Railway's app sleeping stops the desktop session as well. Use the desktop for your own work: the Fair Use Policy forbids cryptocurrency mining, torrenting, reselling compute, operating proxies or anonymization services, and abusive bots or scrapers.

Why Deploy Ubuntu 26.04 LXQt Desktop on Railway?

Railway gives the desktop HTTPS, a persistent volume and usage-based billing without any server to manage. You get a Linux desktop at a URL in a few minutes, pay for the RAM and CPU it actually uses, and can resize or redeploy it from the dashboard. This is a community template, not affiliated with linuxserver.io, the Selkies project, the distribution's publishers or Railway.