Recommendations for remote desktop server for Linux

[binhex]

Hi guys, i have had several attempts at ditching my windows 10 vm (running on unraid of course) for a Linux vm instead, few reasons for this, forced large updates to windows 10 is pissing me off, data leakage, and i hate microsoft.

 

However i always fall foul of remote desktop access on linux, it seems all a bit shit tbh, windows rdp performance always seems to be considerably better (my upload bandwidth is very low), so im reaching out for anybody to recommend a decent remote desktop server that has performance thats close if not on par with windows rdp, anybody got any suggestions?.

 

Remote desktop servers ive tried so far:-

 

Google Chrome Remote Desktop - not bad but performance is still a bit crud

xRDP - the ui for this seems to be something out of windows 95, not got this to work and as it was butt ugly too i gave up, maybe worth persevering?

TigerVNC - not tried this yet, again worth a go perhaps, anybody using this?

 

Things the solution must be able to do:-

 

remote desktop client must run on windows and mac

ideally have encryption or at least basic password authentication

mirror the console, i dont really want to start a separate session

performance that is close to Windows RDP

 

Any suggestions guys?

 

Edited April 4, 2018 by binhex

[uldise]

are you tried nomachine.com?

[binhex]

1 minute ago, uldise said:

are you tried nomachine.com?

 

no, is it any good?, decent performance? console access?

[uldise]

i use them on my linux Ubuntu machines. for me, performance is very good, i use them just for admin purposes. never tried to play video for example

so, just give it a try - you should install on both client and server. i'm using it with VPN, so no need for built-in encryption..

[binhex]

3 minutes ago, uldise said:

i use them on my linux Ubuntu machines. for me, performance is very good, i use them just for admin purposes. never tried to play video for example

so, just give it a try - you should install on both client and server. i'm using it with VPN, so no need for built-in encryption..

 

ok i will give it a whirl, thanks for the suggestion!

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, binhex said:

 

no, is it any good?, decent performance? console access?

In my experience NoMachine gives better performance on Windows than RDP.     Not sure about Linux.

[binhex]

OK so ive installed nomachine but im running into an issue, anybody come across a fix for this (mac client, linux server):-

 

i can access the physical console (display 0) ok on first connect but if i disconnect and then try to re-connect nomachine reports "no available sessions on this server", if i then reboot the vm then i can connect to display 0 again, maybe its hanging onto the session or something on disconnect and thus when i reconnect no sessions are available?, hmm i just don't know, googling so far has not revealed an answer.

 

edit - think i got it cracked, it's either the fact i have both google chrome remote desktop running and nomachine and/or the fact i didn't have nomachine server enabled and running as a service (install via AUR package), although it did start on boot, so not sure how it was running,whatever it was its a step forward, now i just got to see if i can get the performance up, its sadly still very laggy compared to ms rdp on a low bandwidth link :-(

Edited April 4, 2018 by binhex

[uldise]

With nomachine free version you can connect to physical session only, while with paid version you can create virtual sessions too. and according quality - try to experiment with some nomachine settings on client/server. 

[ijuarez]

have you tried teamviewer?

[hernandito]

+1 for TeamViewer 

[demonmaestro]

I would say teamviewer but doesn't it get uploaded to their servers first then to you?

[Jcloud]

14 hours ago, demonmaestro said:

I would say teamviewer but doesn't it get uploaded to their servers first then to you?

My understanding its more like a SIP proxy, teamviewer servers facilitate the two end points connect to each other without needing/knowing one or both IP addresses, dns address, or ddns address of said endpoints.

[LesterCovax]

On 4/5/2018 at 5:09 PM, Jcloud said:

My understanding its more like a SIP proxy, teamviewer servers facilitate the two end points connect to each other without needing/knowing one or both IP addresses, dns address, or ddns address of said endpoints.

 

I used Teamviewer for years on all of my machines with no issues, but stopped using it completely a few years back when my mouse started moving on its own to the browser address bar with someone trying to access my ebay account.  Immediately powered down the machine and shat myself.  I had my account protected by a high entropy password, and additional passwords on each machine.  They played the blame game on everyone but themselves and I won't be going back.

 

I've been trying to find a good solution for my gaming VM, and there aren't a lot of good solutions that I've found for Linux > Windows that utilize hardware rendering.  UltraVNC and Splashtop support it, but aren't available or up to date for Linux.  RDP works fine through Remmina, but terminal session sharing / console connections are iffy with Steam Link and the need for it not to be locked.  This can be bypassed somewhat by disabling all sleep / logout events and enabling auto-login via `start > run > netplwiz > uncheck "require login" > put in your microsoft associated email as user and your password...but the session sharing can still be flaky if you're using VNC as well.

 

On 4/4/2018 at 6:58 AM, uldise said:

are you tried nomachine.com?

 

Just tried it out and it works pretty well.  I'd rate it near RDP level.