Text 22210, 72 rader
Skriven 2025-06-07 17:27:04 av Gerrit Kuehn (2:240/12)
  Kommentar till text 22206 av Dan Clough (2284.fido_linux)
Ärende: Re: Linux RDP
=====================
Hello Dan!

07 Jun 25 08:50, Dan Clough wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

 GK>> Do you want persistent logins? Do you want access to the physical X
 GK>> display (:0), virtual ones, or both? Looking for the client or the
 GK>> server end (or both)?

 DC> Don't even know enough about it to answer the first two questions...  

There is a difference if you want to share your physical display, i.e., the
session that is displayed on the monitor connected to the server, or if you
want a "virtual" session that is running on the server with no monitor hardware
attached. Some software can do one, some the other, some both.

Which software you want depends on what you want to achieve: using the physical
display remotely is more or less required if you want to give users in front of
the machine remote help, i.e., see their screens, move their mouse, type for
them.
OTOH, running virtual session enables you to hook up several remote users to a
server, everyone running their own session. This way, you could, for example,
use a more powerful server to run several (virtual) desktop environment
sessions, each of these being displayed by a less powerful thin client.

Having "persistent" logins means that your virtual session (with all software
running) is not automatically terminated when your client disconnects. Instead,
it is waiting on the server until your client reconnects (which could be days
later).
If you are familiar with tools like "screen" or "tmux" on the commandline (or
in xterm): persistent virtual X sessions are pretty much the same concept, just
using X sessions (including your full desktop if you like) instead of a
textmode terminal.

 GK>> If VNC and RDP above are not a requirement (but merely examples): I 
 GK>> am using x2go for a couple of years now (and try to avoid the other 
 GK>> two, if possible).

 DC> I'm assuming you avoid VNC/RDP for security reasons...

Well, depends on the actual setup and software you use, I guess. I probably
would not recommend the original VNC ("realvnc") to anyone these days. TightVNC
or TigerVNC usually perform better, provide more features and better security.
RDP, on the other hand, was invented by MS. At least for me, especially the
server part always felt tedious to set up and clumsy to operate. This is
probably caused by its "alien" (from *ix-perspective) origin. Admittedly, I
have not used it for quite some time, maybe it improved meanwhile. I am using
it on *ix systems as a client (remmina being my default client there) when I
have to talk to MS servers. However, I would avoid the server on *ix systems if
I have other choices.

 DC>  I've added x2go to my list of candidates, and it looks pretty good.  

I have used x2go in various scenarios over the last years, usually running the
server on Linux machines to be able to operate their software from Windows,
MacOS, *BSD oder other Linux boxes. It is reasonably fast, tunnels over ssh by
default, supports using SSH key authentication and SSH jump hosts (so you do
not have to mess with firewall rules and port forwarding if you already have an
ssh port open), offers session management, persistance, access to the physical
X display. On top of that, it is OpenSource and easy to set up, so for me there
is not much more to ask for.
You have to take care a bit when using "fancy" desktop environments that come
with compositors, transparency and stuff like that. My default desktop is xfce,
x2go usually works fine with it.


Regards,
Gerrit

...  5:27PM  up 182 days, 23:34, 10 users, load averages: 0.59, 0.68, 0.71

--- msged/fbsd 6.3 2021-12-02
 * Origin: Dry thoughts for the tenant (2:240/12)