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Comment by ahmetsait | Hacker News Reader

I recently tried to get remote desktop working on my KDE laptop with xrdp. Spent days trying to get it working properly with all the fixes and workarounds I've found online and yet it didn't even come close to how smooth it all works in Windows. In the end, I accepted defeat, depressed about the state of linux desktop even more.

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The good news is: We know and we're taking your needs seriously.

Much improved RDP support is coming with Plasma 6 in early 2024: https://planet.kde.org/arjen-hiemstra-2023-08-08-remote-desk...

It's integrated into the Plasma display server, so no more fiddling with xrdp.

Been using KDE Neon on a NUC as a second desktop for years and been loving it, but the complete lack of a usable remote desktop solution for it (I've tried them all, they all suck) has meant my main desktop stays on Windows.

With how Windows 11 is shaping up the future was looking rather depressing.

So this news sounds great, crossing my fingers!

That's great news. At the beginning of the year, I had to decide between Windows and Kubuntu for our company's remote desktop developers. Windows RDP outperformed every Kubuntu option I tested by far. 2023 hasn't been the year of the Linux desktop (remote edition) for us. With these news, it seems 2024 might just be the year!

> exposing a KDE Plasma Wayland session

Does that mean I'll need to start a session locally before I can connect via RDP or will it be like Windows RDP where it starts a session on-demand?

Currently it seems to be intended for sharing a physical screen only

To me the more important point would be if it can connect to an existing session (like Windows can). AFAIK XRDP on all current major linux distros only work with X11 (not Wayland) and if you try to log in using an account that is already logged in locally, you get a black screen.

IIRC Gnome recently launched something the opposite, where you can only share the screen of an already logged-in session (but it does work with Wayland, but only on Gnome).

A built-in KDE Plasma RDP implementation would be a game-changer, especially if it worked with Wayland (I assume it will) and even more so if it could connect to both existing logged-in sessions and start a new session on demand, like Windows does out of the box.

Love KDE! Thank you for the excellent work! The release of the abomination known as Windows 11 has really given a lot of people the opportunity to evaluate new, and better, things!

Wow, I didn't know about this. I often need remote desktop and its been a real pain in the past to get it running and to get it running well.

Last time I played with RDP on Linux it really just seemed to be a wrapper around {the equivalent of} a VNC connection - so even when it worked, it was nothing like the streaming experience when RDP'ing into a Windows machine. Not sure if things have improved since, or FreeRDP does things differently.

I had a quick glance through the FreeRDP site but didn't spot any immediate clues as to whether this is a true Windows-style optimised/streamed RDP implementation or a "we'll send you a constanst stream of compressed bitmap screenshots" VNC-style...

RDP on Windows is one of the few things I really miss from the Windows ecosystem. There is nothing on Mac or Linux that I've seen to date which comes even close to the near-instantanous experience of using a Windows machine over RDP.

Hell yeah. I spent a lot of time on RDP (Working remotly on my work laptop). Its great protocol, and over LAN its very very snappy, you can pretty much stream video via it but it will choke bandwidth like there is no tomorrow ;) (around 80Mbit 640x400@25)

Indeed, comparing it to Xserver, its much better. I use quite a lot Xserver on windows too, to render for example remote Firefox. It works pretty well, but not that good compared to RDP.

About 15 or maybe even 20(?) years ago I could RDP into a Windows server over a crappy mobile phone data connection connected to my laptop on a moving train and get stuff done. It is a phenomenal protocol, when implemented correctly!!

You need to set sesman.ini to use Xrdp instead of the Xvnc back-end - that is a packaging issue in some distros. With the right gear you can do 60fps without any issues: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700

Aha. Very good. Not sure how I missed that at the time. I’ll definitely be giving this a shot.

And your excellent blog is already in my RSS reader so I have even less excuse for missing this detail… :)

I too have gone down that rabbit hole with xrdp. I compiled a step-by-step guide that worked on an older version of Ubuntu but it broke with later versions and I gave up.

I can't speak for KDE, but modern versions of gnome+wayland have a built-in RDP server that "just works" (Settings, select Sharing, and enable Remote Desktop). It doesn't perform quite as well as windows RDP (a bit more lag) but is vastly superior to other options I've tried (VNC, NoMachine).

If you just need an RDP _client_ on Linux, Remmina is really solid.

NoMachine works great for me :) It’s not perfect, but it’s darn good, and I can consistently use it across all my Mac/Win/Lin devices.

https://www.nomachine.com/

NoMachine was the closest to Windows RDP that I could find, and I tried FreeRDP, xpra, x2go, various vnc flavours and forwarding X windows / sessions. It was a few years ago that I tested them so alternatives may have improved.

NoMachine is still snappy enough for my needs: primarily browser usage.

It does need the remote machine to be logged in, however, which can be annoying and is a differentiator from how Windows RDP works.

> It does need the remote machine to be logged in

NoMachine seems the only one (that worked well?) I've tried a few years back that could be used to access remotely a local session and viceversa. Which is my use case. Sadly the local session must be logged in, as you said. The black screen feature sometime would fail and any passer by would then be able to use the machine locally. Also if there was a problem with the connection or you forgot to disconnect remotely there was no way to take over the session locally. Complete dealbreaker for me

I've only really used it for a VM, and using it "locally" via the hypervisor console works fine - in fact, I can operate both at the same time (NoMachine plus hypervisor console view) and you can see actions on one occurring on the other (since it's using the same desktop).

Hi,

Sarah from NoMachine here. Would you be able to reach out to us so we can investigate the blank screen not working properly? I understand that you are not using NoMachine anymore, but it would be useful for us to know more details about your setup at the time. You can use the contact us link in the footer of our website. Thank you!

Hi x3haoled

Sarah from NoMachine here. Your comment is truly appreciated :-) We would be interested in hearing from you to learn how we can make it even better. Would you be willing to reach out to us so we can ask you some further questions? You can contact us via the Contact Us link in the footer of the website https://www.nomachine.com/contact-request. Thanks once again and keep nomachining!

I've never used xrdp but I've used Remmina (snap and also flatpak) without an issue. In fact and as a confession, it's what I use when working from home to connect to my work laptop and be able to work from my Linux desktop.

https://remmina.org/

The promise behind this sounds like the holy grail of Remote Access.

Is it Linux-only for the clients? Or can you use Mac and/or Windows to reach a Remmina server?

Edit: looks like it is RDP protocol compatible? If so, WOW, that's cool!

From https://remmina.org/authors/:

> I've been using Remmina now for several years. I love how it's integrated into Ubuntu by default and how I can access the multiple platforms I have to support in one application. I mostly use RDP and VNC (Ultra VNC).

Remmina is great but it's a client only, no server.

I use it for both RDP and VNC to my Windows desktop. The flatpak currently has a bug with audio over RDP so I've gone back to the version in my distro's packages.

Thanks for the clarification!

Remmina is a client only, and when it works, it works great. Supports all the basic protocols and has a bunch of plugins (including Teamviewer!) for protocols that don't come with the program.

It used to have some weird bugs on Ubuntu though, making it crash after clicking the wrong buttons for some reason. That seems to have been corrected and now it just works. Make sure to use an up to date version, especially if you're on an older LTS machine.

remmina is awesome. it even supports spice

I work out of a reminna session every day. I rdp into my windows work laptop from my linux desktop and use it all day. Works great. Audio and video passthrough working well enough that i can use my speakers and boom mic for meetings without getting echo.

I have i3wm configured to always launch my work rdp session in virtual desktop 10. Switching between work and personal desktops is instantaneous. 10x more convenient than the kvm and thunderbolt dock setups I’ve used before.

I did it on a Gnome desktop recently and had the opposite experience - it was really simple! There was (of course) one issue regarding profiles, but it was very easy to fix and it auto logs in from my saved credentials in the MacOS Remote Desktop client.

Same, with Gnome it worked amazingly well for me. I didn't even have to install anything since it's built in to Gnome (under Sharing -> Remote Desktop)

Try NoMachine, it's been around for a long time and works great on all of my devices

Just in case anyone uses NixOS, the following simple piece of code just works for me, and I spent no time setting up a new NixOS machine that enables remove desktop with RDP:

https://github.com/nixvital/vital-modules/blob/main/modules/...

For similar reasons, I ended up using x11vnc as server, and Remmina as the client. Granted, it has been a few years since I last needed it, but this was what worked best, and mostly out of the box too.

Why use xrdp, and not x11 forwarding over ssh -C (compression)?

I can reasonably drive firefox over that link whereas anything bitmap based tends to just die.

One advantage of a remote desktop protocol over x11 forwarding is being able to keep the application(s) open and in the same state when you disconnect and connect from another machine or access the host machine.

I haven't really used xrdp, but I have used xpra and have been able to attach to running instances of applications that I left open on the host machine remotely (much like I can reattach to a screen or tmux session remotely).

exactly this. i cant get over why people need to reinvent the wheel again and again.

i dont get why there isnt SPICE implementation outside of libvirt. because, thats even better. i mean - usb redirection, sound, (possibly even 3d accel)...

and suggesting doubt-ware like anydesk or even worse - teamviewer... okay, these last ones make sense in some situations.

RDP / xRDP / Windows -> Linux is a complete shitshow. I forget this about every 14 months, try to get it working, get extremely mad, and just resign myself to using the completely awful VNC protocol.

try xpra.

Use rdesktop if you want an actual functional RDP client on Linux or krdc if you want convenience (GUI)

Probably about the same level of smooth as getting X Windows working well on Windows.

vcxsrv worked pretty well in my experience!

It eats your CPU for breakfast, but before VS Code Remote SSH I used to use X forwarding to get a get a Linux VS Code window on my Windows box.

Gnome has RDP built in, may be worth a try depending on your distro.

Your best bets are (in order): - Remmina - Xpra - Anydesk

AnyDesk is surprisingly good and works on Linux

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