Installing the Amazon WorkSpaces Linux Client on RPM based Distros

wksFedora.md

Summary

Amazon released a Linux based client for the WorkSpaces service in Novermber of 2019 (https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/11/amazon-workspaces-introduces-workspaces-client-for-linux/). Unfortunately, for non-Ubuntu users, the offical instructions (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/latest/userguide/amazon-workspaces-linux-client.html#linux_setup) only list Ubuntu support and only a Deb package is provided. This guide will show how to install and use the client on RPM based distros like Fedora.

Steps

Install Dependancies

The WorkSpaces client requires the ackages gtk3, libsoup and webkit2gtk3. These should already be installed, but you can install them with the following command if they are now.

sudo dnf install webkit2gtk3 libsoup gtk3

You will also need wget and binutils if it is not already installed.

sudo dnf install wget binutils

For Fedora 36, openssl compat is needed

sudo dnf install openssl1.1

Downloading the package

You can download the package directly from the WorkSpaces clients page at https://clients.amazonworkspaces.com. To do so you will need to browse to the Linux Client page and click the link at the bottom of the page to download the Deb pacakge. Alternatively, you can get it directly using wget using the bwlow command:

wget https://d3nt0h4h6pmmc4.cloudfront.net/workspacesclient_amd64.deb

Opening the package

Start by creating a target folder to unpack the Deb package.

mkdir ~/WorkSpacesClient
mv workspacesclient_amd64.deb ~/WorkSpacesClient

Then unpack the Deb using ar and tar

ar x workspacesclient_amd64.deb
tar -xf control.tar.xz
tar -xf data.tar.xzq

Finally create a symlink to the executable and cleanup.I suggest creating the symlink in a folder that is part of your Path.

ln -s WorkSpacesClient/opt/workspacesclient/workspacesclient workspaces
rm control.tar.xz
rm data.tar.xz

Updating

#!/bin/bash
rm -r WorkSpacesClient-old
mv WorkSpacesClient WorkSpacesClient-old
mkdir WorkSpacesClient
cd WorkSpacesClient
wget https://d3nt0h4h6pmmc4.cloudfront.net/workspacesclient_amd64.deb
ar x workspacesclient_amd64.deb
tar -xf control.tar.xz
tar -xf data.tar.xz
rm workspacesclient_amd64.deb
rm control.tar.xz
rm data.tar.xz