I used this as a solution for remote workers in my company. Set up rdp on Windows with 24-bit color and select "LAN" connectivity improves sluggishnes.
It takes a bit of tinkering to get the xRDP config working well, but when it works, it's really smooth.
I used X over RDP. Make sure no users are locally logged in before logging in via RDP.
Xrdp: An open source RDP server
61–70 of 80 posts
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#62So a long time ago I worked volunteer IT for a fan convention. This is roughly mid to late 2000s. Among many other things, I was constantly looking for ways to speed up the registration line. And rather than have reg workers type things in, one way I hit on was to have terminals there for people to enter their own information. Shoestring doesn't even begin to cover it. Buying computers was definitely out. So I hit on…
I used those same winterms too. The problem was we were then updating our network for PCI compliance and one of the issues we had was our call centre teams used old green screens which were connected to via telnet and there was no way to update these winterms to install PuTTY.
Then I hit upon the idea of using them as even more dumb terminals. So I set up a PXE server that would serve an NFS volume hosting a minimal Linux distro and setting those winterms to boot via DHCP.
Surprisingly those winterms not only supported Linux but ran it really well.
This system ran for several years until those old green screens were replaced with web front ends instead. Which made me sad for two reasons, firstly the end of the PXE solution which works so smoothly, and secondly seeing the old green screen server decommissioned, which was a Sun SPARC box bought in the 90s and had an uptime of something ridiculous like 8 years.
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#63I use RDP multiple times every day. I have tested Linux RDP server implementations and they are very buggy and really not production ready only NX kinda is (yet not as good as MS RDP). VNC is so bad and lacks so many features that it's not even considered a competition - it's old insecure slow protocol that should be forgotten by now.
VNC supports TLS... What part of that is insecure? By my experience I can't see in which use cases it would be slow either, but they possibly exist...
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#64Tried to use xrdp on couple clients' machines and gave up at the end after 2 months (Ubuntu was used as host and client). Always had problems starting with keyboard layouts, xdisplays, remmina client, and ending with black screens ( https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/issues/1358 ). Also, it requires a very good connection, if you have sometimes a long ping - your clients would be randomly frozen. The solution only…
Maybe Spice is the answer. It works good on VMs.
Is there any way to run spice on real hardware? I can only find drivers for VMs
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#65I use RDP multiple times every day. I have tested Linux RDP server implementations and they are very buggy and really not production ready only NX kinda is (yet not as good as MS RDP). VNC is so bad and lacks so many features that it's not even considered a competition - it's old insecure slow protocol that should be forgotten by now.
VNC supports TLS... What part of that is insecure? By my experience I can't see in which use cases it would be slow either, but they possibly exist...
For me VNC feels more sluggish than RDP. I can tolerate working with RDP to a server over Wi-Fi over a DSL line. VNC between two computers on my home network (client on Wifi and server on wire) feels laggy. If I connect the client to a wire, it's tolerable.
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#66Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#67If anyone wants to have a go at a “normal” end-to-end user experience, I have a Docker setup with Xrdp and audio enabled at https://github.com/rcarmo/ubuntu-xrdp that I poke at now and then, and loads of previous attempts at the same all over my GitHub (many of my “desktop app” containers have VNC, Xrdp or Guacamole bundled in for remote access from my Mac and iPad).
Right now the biggest issue I have with RDP on Linux is that the default packages that ship with most distros are useless—they are either outdated (still in VNC proxy mode) or poorly integrated with login managers. Also, even though I get “free” multi-head when accessing a Windows desktop from my Mac (and believe me, that is an amazing way to work on a daily basis) I have yet to get it to work 100% with a Linux server (it works and I get multi-head, but sometimes displays are swapped for some reason).
Many people don’t “get” RDP because they confuse it with VNC and other remote display solutions. But when it is set up properly, it is _massively_ better than VNC, NX or Xpra in terms of bandwidth, latency, and client support (yes, there are thousands of VNC clients, and every Linux box can do X over SSH, but I can use RDP from my iPad, Android, etc., and those are the thin clients I travel with).
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#68Headless? In the Features section of the xrdp GitHub project page is this: "Connect to a Linux desktop using RDP from anywhere (requires xorgxrdp Xorg module)" Does this imply that serving from a headless Linux machine is not possible like we can with vncserver instances?
No. It means that you need an X server willing to provide access to the bitmaps inside it using that module, but you can run Xrdp fully headless against a memory buffer (like VNC does with Xvnc) or proxy via RDP to an in-memory VNC server (which is the “old” way of using Xrdp).
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#69A few years ago, I managed to build XRDP with RemoteFX enabled. This was the smoothest remote desktop I have ever experienced. I couldn't replicate it a while later after an OS upgrade and I have since given up on it. Does anybody else have experience with this? Should I give it another try?
Have a look at https://github.com/rcarmo/ubuntu-xrdp. I _think_ it has RemoteFX enabled, but to be honest I haven’t delved into the internals for a while and last time I did I was trying to get audio working.
Re: Xrdp: An open source RDP server
#70I've been using xrdp more extensively with WSL2 recently. Because WSL2 often gets a new network interface assigned, X connections back to Windows are terminated, while rdesktop to xrdp running on the WSL2 instance does not.
RemoteFX is active, but on my 2560x1440 display there is still a bit of sluggishness. However, it's fine to run PyCharm locally on the WSL2, which is my primary use case with this.