Ask HN: Alternatives to Team Viewer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Alternatives to Team Viewer?

45 pointsriebschlager57 comments

I have several machines around the country that I need to remotely manage. Team Viewer has been unreliable and I'm looking to move our organization away from it.

Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?

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RDP ? Why doesn't anyone use the official protocol for remote desktop on Windows ? It's fast. I say this as a unix dev that likes to RDP into a Windows box to test stuff.

Many people don't think of RDP because it isn't great for support-type jobs: you can't share the screen with the local user. But for administrative purposes where that is not required it is a good way to go.

That's what "Window Remote Assistance"[0] is for.

"By following a few steps, you can invite someone to connect to your computer. After he or she is connected, that person can view your computer screen and chat with you about what you both see. With your permission, your helper can even use his or her own mouse and keyboard to control your computer and show you how to fix a problem."

[0] - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows-r...

yeah cuz i want to spend half an hour explaining how to send an invite to the CEO who cant connect to his email 5 minutes before a critical meeting....

in other words, teamviewer requires 0 user interaction

If you can create scripts that do that for you....

If it's a domain computer you don't even need that.

scripts are fallible, especially when the user is in another country with no access to the DC

servers is one thing, user support is another animal.

OpenGL doesn't work with RDP - it's an issue for using some apps remotely.

https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1981...

I remember reading a while ago about a virtual GPU with RemoteFx[1], I have no idea how it works though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX

RemoteFX works really good, but it only works on specific hardware iirc

Had never heard of RemoteFX before, thanks.

Looks like it works on almost any new GPUs now.

Question - Could I use hyper-V and RemoteFX to do something different - enable CUDA/GPU passthrough from a Windows host to a Linux VM?

I'd like to do some deep learning training on my Windows GPU machine without dual booting into Linux.

you need a CPU that supports VT-IO (intel, not sure of teh AMD version)

then you can passthrough hardware directly into a VM, theres some tricks and workarounds to it depending on your hypervisor/main OS

Xen or KVM can help you do the reverse.

I use Terminals https://terminals.codeplex.com/ for all my RDP sessions and some SSH sessions as well. It's very useful.

Similarly I, and most people at my company, use mremmote ng http://www.mremoteng.org/

windows 10 home doesn't include RDP

the last time I checked it included the client, anyway, you usually don't mount a server with windows home.

The server is present in Home editions as well, although the access is invite-only. It can be found under the "Remote Assistance" name (msra.exe).

I'm not sure if non-MS clients (like rdesktop) are able to work with it, though.

You can't share the screen with RDP, and you have to VPN in, or port forward with NAT...

Don't you need a static IP for using RDP? Not everyone have a static IP

And Remote Desktop Connection Manager...

Let me add to this that in addition to OP stating that it has been unreliable I think there are two other big reasons to move away:

1. TeamViewer is used a lot for Microsoft scams and AFAIK they don't care very much.

2. Dark patterns. TeamViewer upgrade their protocol all-the-time and once one part has updated the others have to as well, forcing the cost on everyone. (And the pricing is outrageous IMO. When you can get a full office suite for less than the subscription cost of the remote support solution then something odd is going on.)

Chrome Remote Desktop is the best solution I have used. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desk...

It's difficult to configure chrome remote desktop for persistent sharing and autostarting, at least in linux. THen it times out every few minutes asking the local user to continue approving access. It doesn't seem to compete with teamviewer by design.

Guacamole?

Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744430

(a bit of port forwarding or VPN) + (VNC or RDP) ?

What you get from TeamViewer/LogMeIn/etc. is the zeroconf aspect of the experience, which in turn is because they provide of a central rendezvous/discovery point. If you know where your peers are, you don't really need an assisted remote management service.

https://www.nomachine.com/

NoMachine works quite well on a headless Mac Mini. You'll need a display emulator dongle to prevent OSX rendering artifacts: https://www.amazon.com/CompuLab-fit-Headless-Display-Emulato...

> Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?

What of teamviewer's features do you need? Screen sharing? Forget RDP. Zeroconf / NAT punching? Forget VNC. And so on…

If the machines already are in a VPN and you don't need screensharing, RDP is probably the most reliable solution.

Maybe you're thinking about Windows (you didn't specify), but if you happen to be on OSX, then a lot of people don't realize that iMessage in Messages.app has screen sharing built in. "Buddies" menu -> "Ask To Share Screen".

You should list more detailed requirements. Are the hosts you manage behind network firewalls and/or NAT? Do you expect to be able to initiate requests in, or does the client initiate requests out?

The best alternative that I've used for end user support is Remote Utilities: https://www.remoteutilities.com/ They have an executable that non-technical users can easily download + run in addition to a version for unattended access.

Relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4m7ay6/teamview...

It looks like there are several reports of folks being hacked via TeamViewer.

http://www.splashtop.com/ works very well for me.

Some alternatives:

- RDP

- RealVNC (free for personal use): https://www.realvnc.com/products/vnc/

- LogMeIn: https://secure.logmein.com/home

Why is it downvoted, VNC based clients are very common and RDP (while not really optimal as replacement, has been upvoted a lot in another comment).

If you are an Industrial Machine builder/Industrial OEM, you might be interested in our marketplace for remote diagnostic services. The remote screensharing tools are backed into the platform via WebRTC. We however don't offer remote control.

www.machiq.com

I've been using join.me and HipChat's builtin screen sharing. Back in days, when I had to manage many Windows hosts, I've used Radmin (https://www.radmin.com/).

Check out Pertino http://pertino.com and Zerotier https://www.zerotier.com

Team Viewer is about controlling a pc / Mac remotely. Like 'viewing' the screen...

It costs money, but there's always the BOMGAR box.

https://www.bomgar.com/

I've been using SimpleHelp. Self-hosted. Not perfect but very good, reasonable cost. Install an agent or use a one-time app.

I use nomachine, works on Linux and Windows. I have a VPN installed at all locations and the software runs behind that.

Ammyy admin : http://www.ammyy.com/

I have been using GoToAssist for around five years to connect to different client machines.

there is FastViewer, don't know the cost and of course several free variants of VNC

http://anydesk.com

I've been meaning to test this - how is the video codec, they say it's much better than others?

I mainly use remote windows sessions for modeling/rendering with 3DS Max

Best alternative, but it's still in the making. Unstable on Windows XP and buggy sometimes.

Is there anything that uses h265 available for remote desktop?

Why would you want that? Pretty much no hardware natively support h265 and any bandwidth gains you might get are swamped by the CPU and latency cost with software encoding h265

New-ish desktop nvidia GPUs encode h265 natively, my gtx970 does anyway

Most people don't have newiwsh desktop-class GPUs. Particularly in the enterprise environment most remote desktop programs are born out of

Alpemix very well for me. Small,fast,cheap.

I like www.mikogo.com

AnyDesk maybe

Screenconnect.

After being both out by Connectwise, Screenconnect's new pricing model is horribly expensive now - I'm grandfathered but wouldn't touch it now. Simple Help is seems to at the point where Screenconnect was a few years ago - works, cheap, and good support.

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