Rdesktop

rdesktop is a free, open source client for Microsoft's proprietary RDP protocol released under the GNU General Public License. Use rdesktop to connect to Windows RDP server to remotely administrate the Windows box.

Note: The upstream rdesktop project is looking for a new maintainer. In the meantime, it is advised to use the other branch of the project called freerdp, actively maintained. See here for an explanation on the history of both projects and see how they are tied together.

As of July 2008, rdesktop implements a large subset of the RDP 5 protocol, including:

Bitmap caching
File system, audio, serial port and printer port redirection
Mappings for most international keyboards
Stream compression and encryption
Automatic authentication
Smartcard support
RemoteApp like support called "seamless" mode via SeamlessRDP

Still unimplemented are:

Remote Assistance requests
USB device redirection

Support for the additional features available in RDP 5.1 and RDP 6 (including multi-head display spanning and window composition) also have not yet been implemented.

Installation

Install the rdesktop package.

Usage

For a complete listing of options see rdesktop(1). Here is a typical line:

$ rdesktop -g 1440x900 -P -z -x l -r sound:off -u windowsuser 98.180.102.33:3389

Reading from left to right:

`-g 1440x900`	Sets the resolution of the display to 1440x900
`-P`	Enables bitmap caching/speeds up xfers.
`-z`	Enables RDP datastream compression
	Uses the "lan" quality experience level, see the man page for additional options
	Redirects sound generated on the server to null
	This defines the username to use when logging into the Windows box
	This is the IP address and port number of the target machine

Tips and tricks

Automatic scaling of geometry

In order to automatically scale the geometry to fit the screen, one can use the command line option. Either by using percentage,

$ rdesktop -g 100% -P -z 98.180.102.33:3389

or with numerical values:

-g $(xrandr -q | awk '/Screen 0/ {print int($8/1.28) $9 int($10/1.2)}' | sed 's/,//g')

Remote desktop using NetBIOS names instead of using IP address

If you do not know the IP address of a Windows computer in a network, you have to enable wins support. To do so, you have to install samba. Enabling wins in samba is surprisingly easy: just edit the and add the following line to it, or uncomment the appropriate line:

wins support = yes

Then you have to install winbind, then edit the and add the "wins" to the list of hosts.

Restart smb and services and test your success by pinging a Windows NetBIOS host.

Supplying missing cursors

See Cursor themes#Supplying missing cursors.

gollark: Routing is handled according to normal IP. RFC 1149 is merely a transport.

gollark: There are some store and forward protocols which are sort of that.

gollark: RFC 1149, but it isn't widely deployed.

gollark: If we had more data, it could be VERY COOL to track data/memetic hazard flow between Discord servers.

gollark: The main issue is that sometimes people just won't share memes etc. for arbitrary reasons.