[HN Gopher] FreeRDP 2.0 - A Remote Desktop Protocol implementation
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FreeRDP 2.0 - A Remote Desktop Protocol implementation
Author : conductor
Score : 172 points
Date : 2020-04-10 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.freerdp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.freerdp.com)
| 1996 wrote:
| Unlike others here, I am non plussed by an open source
| implementation of an old format mostly used by non free operating
| systems. It doesn't add much.
|
| I would be far more interested by a GPU accelerated server, with
| a focus on low latency, like parsec: something more or less
| equivalent, with native support for wayland or xorg would be much
| more interesting.
|
| This would superset the uses of RDP: you can use parsec for
| remote desktops, just like you can with RDP except it's smoother
| and more responsive.
|
| But you can also use games with parsec, something you can't do
| with RDP, and everything else that requires low latency.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Many people, myself included, use this software to connect to
| remote windows machines that we have no control over. It's
| incredibly valuable, you're just not the target audience
| apparently.
| wayneftw wrote:
| I'm so glad that the FreeRDP client on Linux works really well.
| It's one of the pieces of software that made transitioning away
| from Windows much more convenient as I continue to work with
| Windows systems and sometimes, tools.
|
| The RDP server is one thing I miss from Windows though. On Linux
| I haven't found anything nearly as good. It's really surprising
| to me too - given that a good visual remoting tool allows for
| such ease in cross platform living.
|
| I suppose there are a lot of reasons for this, but primarily I
| guess that most Unix natives would consider SSH to be good
| enough.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I'd guess most Unix natives consider SSH to be superior to RDP.
| SSH give you shell access which is a better interface for
| working with remote systems than a GUI.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > On Linux I haven't found anything nearly as good.
|
| Xrdp on the server side works pretty well for us once you get
| it set up correctly.
| chajath wrote:
| Chrome Remote Desktop is a pretty performant and hassle-free
| option
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm growing to like xpra for remoting graphical applications,
| especially with the HTML5 client.
| yyyk wrote:
| The krdc & xfreerdp combination is terrible. I don't know which
| program is at fault (probably krdc), but it's not working well
| at all.
|
| There's the occasional random disconnection to right-click
| rarely leading to disconnection to a case where xfreerdp asks
| for a password in the terminal but I don't see it in krdc.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Yep, krdc needs a lot of love - I just use the freerdp
| command line program and that works great.
| vinzf wrote:
| There is actually an awesome RDP server (called ogon project)
| based on FreeRDP available:
|
| https://github.com/ogon-project/ogon
| yokohummer7 wrote:
| It's strange nobody mentions NX (NoMachine). When I tried it
| ~10 years ago, it was much faster than VNC, nearly identical to
| RDP. Why isn't it more popular?
| zerkten wrote:
| When I tried it last year it was a pretty horrible experience
| because it installed client and server on Windows and macOS
| when I just wanted the client. I had to go in and kill some
| services for the server part. Having to do stuff like that
| for security reasons is a bit of a turn off.
|
| The actual performance of NX was good, so I'll give them
| that. I think other people having licencing concerns, but I'm
| fine with it.
| dekhn wrote:
| I run xrdp on Ubuntu and connect to it from a windows machine
| using the Remote Desktop client. It has some restrictions- and
| setup issues (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/xrdp) but I use
| it daily to drive a remote CNC machine's host.
| dijit wrote:
| Not sure if you're aware, so I apologise if you are:
|
| 1) X11 is already a network aware display system, so it
| wouldn't take too much work to run remote.
|
| 2) SSH has built-in X11 forwarding with `ssh -X <host>`, when
| you run commands they will be rendered locally. On OSX this
| needs an X11 server (XQuartz) to work properly.
|
| 3) There are "better" remote desktop solutions like "parsec"[0]
| which run on Windows and Linux. They offer much lower latency
| and higher bit-depth. They're designed for games. (obviously
| this comes at the price of bandwidth).
|
| [0]: https://parsecgaming.com/features/
| tssva wrote:
| Along with better performance and reliability than X11 RDP
| allows redirection of sound, folders, USB devices, and can
| present a virtual GPU which allows access to the physical GPU
| of the remote end.
| makkesk8 wrote:
| parsec does not support multiple monitors which is a deal
| breaker in many use cases, so far windows rdp is the best
| free solution for at least windows -> windows remoting.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| Isn't RDP more akin to VNC than X11? You can connected and
| reconnect to existing sessions, something you cannot do with
| X11 (but can with VNC).
|
| I have never heard of Parsec before but it's not immediately
| obvious that it's an alternative to RDP (Desktop usage)
| paulirwin wrote:
| As far as connecting to existing sessions goes, yes, RDP is
| closer to VNC to X11. In that respect only though: you
| can't also simultaneously use the same session locally
| unlike with VNC.
|
| However, as far as the actual implementation goes, RDP is
| closer to X11 than VNC. VNC is basically a remote frame
| buffer, akin to streaming video. This makes it very cross
| platform friendly, but also IMO feels very slow, even on a
| local network. RDP is closer to X11 in that it sends
| display directives (AFAIK, please correct me if I'm wrong)
| so that it can draw them on the client as they would be
| drawn on the server. Think sending a "draw button" command
| rather than sending an image of pixels that are how the
| button would be rendered. This, combined with compression,
| helps make RDP feel very fast compared to VNC, and can be
| used very well even over the internet, unlike X11. I
| connect to RDP servers in Azure all the time and sometimes
| forget I'm not working locally, while with VNC you're
| always aware that it's not as performant.
|
| I really wish there was something like RDP as a server for
| Linux. (OP seems to be a client AFAICT?) Given Microsoft's
| recent investment in Linux, maybe this will happen soon?
| vel0city wrote:
| RDP is definitely closer to the framebuffer style
| rendering than sending explicit draw commands. Newer
| versions of the RDP protocol have made this very
| efficient so it only ends up having to transmit
| compressed data of the changes per frame, but overall its
| still more of a video-like stream than true local
| rendering a la X11.
| paulirwin wrote:
| Thanks! I guess I had been misinformed on that. I was
| also probably thinking of the RemoteFX stuff, like GPU
| and media redirection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > RDP is definitely closer to the framebuffer style
| rendering than sending explicit draw commands.
|
| RDP has capability[1] to send draw commands directly.
|
| From memory it has had this since the early days. At
| least I used RDP against NT4 servers over a single ISDN
| link and it was very smooth. I can't believe it could
| have done that by streaming bitmaps ala VNC.
|
| [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/openspecs/windows_protocols...
| loeg wrote:
| X11 is network aware, in that is theoretically possible to
| speak the protocol over a network. However, anyone
| considering it should be aware that it is (1) extremely
| chatty, (2) extremely synchronous, and (3) extremely latency
| sensitive. It only works well on fast local networks. SSH
| certainly doesn't make it any faster.
|
| In contrast, RDP and VNC type protocols are screen-
| replicating designs more suited to higher latency
| connections.
|
| Finally, if you're using RDP, I'd suggest Remmina as an
| client. It's fantastic.
| hjkgfdfgh wrote:
| To pile on against X11 over ssh, forwarding on a modern
| Linux workstation is spectacularly painful. I recently
| needed to forward a lightweight gtk app from one
| workstation to another over 10gbe and a single switch hop.
|
| With ssh and X forwarding, my local gnome constantly threw
| up modal dialogs that the forwarded window was
| unresponsive, forcing me to keep clicking "Wait" to dismiss
| the modal, then quickly interact with the forwarded window
| before the next "unresponsive" modal popped up.
| inetknght wrote:
| Forwarding Firefox over X11 _sometimes_ works. Sometimes
| Firefox on the remote machine will try to join the
| session of your local firefox -- but fail and then
| complain that there's Firefox already running. Adding
| `--new-instance` helps if Firefox is running in a
| container and X11 socket file is forwarded to the
| container but it doesn't seem to help if X11 is forwarded
| over SSH.
| jabl wrote:
| Try '-no-remote'. Or was that '--no-remote'? Anyway,
| that's what I've used for years and years when needing to
| run firefox over ssh X forwarding.
| inetknght wrote:
| Firefox is running on the remote, connected to a
| different X11 session. It is not running on the local.
| When I use `firefox --new-session --no-remote` on the
| remote, I see a dialog pop up on my local machine stating
| _Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To
| open a new window, you must first close the existing
| Firefox process, or restart your system._
| toast0 wrote:
| > extremely synchronous
|
| X11, the protocol, is actually mostly asynchronous, it's
| the libraries and the applications that were built around
| it in synchronous ways. If you run older applications (like
| 90s to early 2000s) over X11, it's a lot less bad than
| modern apps.
| naasking wrote:
| Isn't that mostly because modern apps have richer
| textures and high resolution, high bit depth images by
| comparison?
| msla wrote:
| I find running GUI GNU Emacs over X11 over ssh to be really
| pleasant, even moreso than using tramp (which occasionally
| hangs for no understandable reason), with the only problem
| being that highlighting text is a bit slow and balky.
| Otherwise, it's indistinguishable from a local Emacs in
| responsiveness.
| brimstedt wrote:
| X11 works remote, but to my knowledge only to start new
| applications.
|
| Connect to an existing session and just "continue where you
| were" is not easy though there might be unmaintained
| solutions.
|
| If you use ssh forwarding and for some reason gets
| disconnected, the application dies.
|
| I'd love for you to tell me I'm wrong :-)
|
| The way rdp works on windows is the only thing where I think
| windows is superior.
|
| Vnc, TeamViewer and similar are not remotely close and they
| will leave your remote screen open for anyone to see.
| aksss wrote:
| Although with teamviewer (maybe others) I think a display
| driver install can black out the far-end screen.
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| Xpra is what you want for this: http://xpra.org/
| dhd415 wrote:
| I was hopeful that Xpra would provide reconnectable
| remote sessions for me on my Linux workstations but I
| found it pretty difficult to configure with poor
| documentation. If there are any better installation
| guides out there, I'd appreciate a pointer to them.
| GranPC wrote:
| Parsec for Linux is only a client; you can't share a Linux
| desktop using Parsec.
| rcxdude wrote:
| There's a mess of different VNC implementations with wildly
| varying speed and quality. TurboVNC is probably the best one
| I've found, it feels pretty similar to RDP in terms of
| performance (even without setting up their 3d acceleration
| stuff).
| cpach wrote:
| When I used X2go a couple of years ago I found it to work quite
| well.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2Go
| u801e wrote:
| > On Linux I haven't found anything nearly as good. It's really
| surprising to me too - given that a good visual remoting tool
| allows for such ease in cross platform living.
|
| Have you tried xpra[1]? I haven't tried forwarding the entire
| desktop, but I have done multiple individual applications with
| sharing enabled. There are some issues with different
| resolutions between the host and guest machine, but it works
| relatively well.
|
| [1] https://xpra.org/
| rlkf wrote:
| I find X2Go to be a very nice Linux remote desktop solution,
| more or less on par with MS-RDP on Windows. The only thing I
| couldn't get to work was continuing a local session remotely
| (disconnecting and later reconnecting to a remote session works
| fine). It is packaged in most mainline distributions.
| stinos wrote:
| _more or less on par with MS-RDP on Windows_
|
| That's surprising. I tried X2Go a couple of times on multiple
| machines (always logging in from Windows to Unbuntu 18.04 if
| that matters, on a local network) and it was horrible. At
| least a crash a day, couldn't get numeric keypad keys to
| work, slow. Not sure if I did anything wrong or just had bad
| luck.. And those are just the basic features. To get on par
| with RDP it should also do multiple screens properly (i.e.
| not one big screen, it's not 2000 anymore), drive/audio/...
| sharing and so on. But I never got to trying that, went back
| to VNC. Which also has problems but at least it allows me to
| do work.
|
| Unfortunately the OP is about right (in my experience, for
| the things I do): if the connection allows it remote desktop
| should really be like you're sitting in front of the physical
| machine. RDP does that for me, on the same level SSH/Mosh
| does that for terminal stuff. I'm not sure what is so hard to
| get right to also get something equivalent on Linux, so maybe
| it's really the lack of interest?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > That's surprising.
|
| Same experience. None of the Linux alternatives are on the
| same planet as RDP.
|
| > I'm not sure what is so hard to get right to also get
| something equivalent on Linux, so maybe it's really the
| lack of interest?
|
| As far as I can see it's lack of interest made worse by the
| usual fragmentation of effort.
|
| Which makes me sad. I really enjoy KDE Neon on my secondary
| PC, but the lack of a viable remote desktop solution means
| it'll stay there.
| Yetanfou wrote:
| Not surprising to me, I've been using x2go for many years
| now and have hardly ever had it crash - I can't remember
| the last time but it is sure to have happened... I guess.
| I'm using it both within a LAN as well as over a VPN
| between countries. I'd say x2go make true on the promise of
| network-transparency which X11 gives in theory but which is
| hard to use in practice.
| tjoff wrote:
| I've done a lot of work through x2go, also windows machine
| connecting to ubuntu. And I've almost exclusively used
| seamless windows which makes superior multi-screen (and
| single screen) UX as window management is just native
| windows.
|
| Well, I guess it depends on the use case etc. but I find
| seamless windows to be the holy grail for most of my work.
| And the ability to resume an entire session is great!
|
| Didn't have that many crashes, maybe once a month or
| something, still a bit frustrating but not enough to scare
| me away. But yeah, maybe I was lucky, didn't get the most
| reliable impression of it but it did still do wonders for
| me.
| dboreham wrote:
| +1 for X2go. The only solution I've found that didn't mess up
| scaling on 3,4k screens.
| [deleted]
| jchw wrote:
| Options for Wayland are a bit less antiquated. Here's a couple.
|
| If you are ever using a wlroots based Wayland compositor, then
| wayvnc becomes an option for RDP. (Note: haven't personally
| used this.)
|
| https://github.com/any1/wayvnc
|
| Waypipe offers network transparency to Wayland, where by you
| can run applications across the network. I believe this should
| work with roughly any compositor.
|
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/
| techntoke wrote:
| There was an RDP backed in wlroots, but it was recently
| removed in favor of wayvnc. My guess is that it works as well
| as RDP. You can still connect to other RDP instances just
| fine using FreeRDP.
| cheez wrote:
| x11vnc is what I use
| azalemeth wrote:
| Although proprietary, I find Thinlinc Just Works and the server
| is free for less than 6 simultaneous connections and supports
| opengl natively in applications (and is based on TurboVNC
| iirc). It's very much a drop-in replacement. Clients are on all
| OSes. They give money upstream.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| What do you need and expect? I have never needed more than VNC
| offers, but I also don't play games on a remote computer or
| view videos over that connection.
| biot wrote:
| RDP is more suited to text as it renders the screen pixel
| perfect. VNC, on the other hand, converts the screen into a
| lossy compressed video stream which is why it's often slow
| and fuzzy until the image stabilizes. Night and day
| difference.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| A number of reasons actually. If you're trying to create a
| multi-user VNC environment on a remote server the displays do
| not always render correctly certain applications particularly
| those requiring 3D components. It can be quite frustrating.
| Moreover not all keyboard keys are recognized in certain
| applications. The single user version of VNC, i.e. classic
| VNC, works well, however it does actually show your remote
| session on the server computer screen and yes, as best I can
| tell, the server must have a monitor.
|
| I've had about enough of the compromises I've had to make to
| make my remote VNC sessions work and mostly have opted to run
| virtual instances of Linux on my local desktop then SSHFD
| mount a drive remotely but this is such a pain or can be
| especially in some applications some research applications
| which can vary results depending on operating system version
| and kernel libraries.
|
| I never experienced these issues with Windows remote desktop
| and this is very frustrating as a Linux user.
| ape4 wrote:
| Is there a nice way to get around NAT?
| mulmen wrote:
| A VPN? I would not expose any kind of remote desktop protocol
| to the internet.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| I'd encourage freerd.com to be more descriptive on the landing
| page - the blurb says "RDP Implementation", but it's not clear if
| it's client, server, or both. As a client, this is only useful to
| people accessing Windows.
| djrogers wrote:
| It also doesn't mention the supported OSs prominently either...
| FpUser wrote:
| I was using (well trying to use) FreeRDP/XRDP for a while to work
| with my multiple Linux machines from the Windows client. Soon
| I've discovered that it was not XRDP working for me but the other
| way around. I replaced it with NoMachine and and never looked
| back since.
|
| Now I am somewhat curious but frankly from a practical standpoint
| I have very little motivation to stop doing what I am doing just
| to check this new one. It will disrupt my routine for the sake of
| completely unknown outcome which in the best case will let me
| have what I already have now. And in the worst case - the
| opposite of sky is the limit.
|
| This is not to discourage developers but just to show what missed
| opportunity might cost should there be more people like myself.
| Thaxll wrote:
| What's the performance vs Remina?
| zootboy wrote:
| Remmina uses freerdp as its RDP library.
| elteto wrote:
| I found it to be somewhat faster when comparing between the
| packages my distro had, but YMMV.
|
| What did make a _noticeable_ difference was to download the
| FreeRDP sources and compile everything statically. That blew
| Remmina out of the water. I did not do the same for Remmina
| though, so the comparison is not fair.
| selfishgene wrote:
| Has anyone been able to get FreeRDP's Thincast Workstation (based
| on VirtualBox) product to work?
|
| http://www.freerdp.com/2019/02/20/hi-thincast-workstation
|
| I know it's still in beta, but it was originally released two
| years ago and I'm still not able to boot ubuntu's mini.iso
| installation media in this graphics-optimized version of
| VirtualBox.
|
| If anyone has been able to test Thincast workstation performance,
| can they compare it to a Hyper-V linux virtual machine connected
| to X410 through VSOCK:
|
| https://x410.dev/cookbook/hyperv/using-x410-with-hyper-v-lin...
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.freerdp.com/ to the home page
| since this project doesn't seem to have been discussed on HN
| before.
| m0zg wrote:
| Microsoft should really consider releasing their official
| implementation as open source and integrating it with Linux
| desktop in a way that doesn't suck. Vnc sucks pretty bad.
| NoMachine sucks a bit less, but doesn't seem to be maintained.
| RDP doesn't suck at all. I've worked with Windows machines
| halfway across the globe using it, and while the experience
| wasn't super snappy, it was usable. I also spent thousands of
| hours working from home using RDP when I was at MS in 00's. With
| sufficient network bandwidth, in full screen, the experience is
| indistinguishable from a local desktop.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Microsoft has released[1] the RDP documentation, which is what
| FreeRDP is based on[2]. Open-sourcing their implementation
| would not help, since it's deeply integrated into the OS.
|
| I was hoping Wayland would take remote desktop seriously when I
| heard about the effort, but sadly that was not to be.
|
| [1]: http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/
|
| [2]: https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/wiki/Reference-
| Documentat...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Changelog:
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/2.0.0/Chan...
| the_arun wrote:
| I have used NoMachine. Liked the experience while connecting to
| Ubuntu from Windows client. With client running on Mac & server
| on Linux - it is Okay experience - not great. Is FreeRDP 2.0
| better? Will try it anyways.
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(page generated 2020-04-10 23:00 UTC)