I recently wanted to apply some updates (OS updates and Horizon Agent) to my Ubuntu 20.04 desktop. It had been several months since I had last updated the desktop and realized the Ubuntu 22.04 had since been released. This is the current/newest Long Term Support release (https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle), which support going into early 2027. I decided this would be a good opportunity to build a new image that revved to the next major release.
I followed the process from a similar article I created for Ubuntu 20.04 (https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/virtualization/horizon-virtual-desktop-non-persistent-ubuntu-20-04/) and found only a few minor differences.
SSSD
When I last created this desktop, I switched from PBIS Open to SSSD for Active Directory authentication. At that time documentation was a little light on how to make this work with Horizon. The Horizon documentation has since been updated (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon/2212/linux-desktops-setup/GUID-1E29173F-1E32-4663-92D6-788905F387E6.html) and provided better guidance for SSO. This resulted in appending an additional couple of lines to the /etc/sssd/sssd.conf file that were not in my previous notes, but are captured in the official documentation.
Firefox
I spent more time troubleshooting Firefox than I care to admit. In the previous Ubuntu 20.04 article, I updated a file (/etc/dconf/db/local.d/00-favorite-apps) to pin Firefox to the app list in the GUI. Additionally, in a previous article (https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/lab-infrastructure/installing-windows-ca-root-certificate-on-linux-and-firefox/) I had described a process to create a Firefox policy to install a specific CA certificate used in my lab. Ubuntu 22.04 switched to a newer snap installer for Firefox and this change had an impact on both of these settings. I tried a couple of different troubleshooting steps, such as moving the policy file to /etc/firefox/policies, changing file permissions, moving the certificate file, but wasn’t able to find a quick path to resolution. I ended up finding an article to revert back to the way Firefox was installed in Ubuntu 20.04. That process is outlined here: How to Install Firefox as a .Deb on Ubuntu 22.04 (Not a Snap) – OMG! Ubuntu! (omgubuntu.co.uk). For reference, I’m going to include the partial list of commands that I implemented (since this is a non-persistent desktop I opted out of the step 4 from the original article that keeps Firefox up to date).
sudo snap remove firefox
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
echo '
Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001
' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla-firefox
sudo apt install firefoxSummary
Overall I was pleasantly surprised that this process worked like it did before. I recall the process going from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 to be much more time consuming. I now have a non-persistent Linux pool, with the latest release of Ubuntu LTS, and a slightly better SSO experience than I previously accepted. Hopefully these notes & previous post links will assist if you plan on setting up a similar desktop.