Hacker News Reader

Comment by raphinou | Hacker News Reader

I'm using freerdp client to connect to an xrdp server. I'm positively surprised of the good user experience it provides on a LAN. Anyone having hands-on experience comparing x2go and xrdp?

View on HN

I have not done a comparison, but RDP is mostly pixel based from what I understand, while x2go is "protocol" based (and therefore limited to xorg/x11), so it's a LOT quicker than say, VNC (even with compression) -- for example, if you drag a window around, it's perfectly "instant" -- there is no lag.

I can develop using geany/vscode/eclipse remotely over a reasonably good DSL/fibre connection and quite frankly, there is zero difference with being "local" to the workstation. Don't even need a LAN.

Only thing which obviously doesn't work as good is web browsing/video etc as that is inherently a lot more pixel pushing.

I used to use cheap Wyse Winterms in a configuration like this years ago. They could be had for about $20 a pop used on eBay 15 years go. A quick look now confirms they can still be had for about $15-20 each. Pair with xrdp on a server and it works great.

Do you know if there is a functioning xrdp server+client combination for Linux? I would like to try to compare to x2go. I tried some on opensuse last year but it didn't work.

I'm successfully using the packages in ubuntu focal (20.04, the latest LTS). It was nearly straight-forward: install and run xrdp on the server, install package freerdp2-x11 on the client. The only unintuitive thing was the keyboard mapping to use, specified with an awkward value passed to the /kbd flag.

well, there's also the audio issues. pulseaudio config for remote use isn't always reliable. but otherwise, yeah xrdp works great for access from machine that already have the client installed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com