RDP Alternative on linux (Ubuntu 18)
Olivia Zamora 
Does someone know a valid alternative on Linux that runs with performance comparable to the RDP on windows 10?
FreeRDP and VNC have bad FPS performance, and the only program I found which can decently manage the remote connection is NoMachine, but it's still far from the RDP experience on Windows 10.
Update: I've already tried xrdp, but it has the same performance of VNC.
More details:
Yes, I'm in control of my server and I can reach it via VPN or external internet.
The client is windows and the server is Linux.
"Bad performance" means that every action is not fluid and responsive like when I'm connected to a windows server via RDP
- I want to use a normal program like Visual Studio Code for programming, normal browser for surfing, and yes some time watch videos and not much else.
- This server does not have a GPU.
6 Answers
Windows RDP achieves its speed by the fact that both server and client are created by Microsoft, which allows it to be heavily optimized.
For example: RDP uses compression to speed up the screen casting, and especially video codecs. To support larger screens than full HD, it will use the AVC/H.264 video codec. This allows it to use the video GPU to speed up the video display and make it more fluid, but it will fall back to the CPU if it is not available.
NoMachine is similarly using a fast protocol, the NX protocol, to achieve its speed, but it cannot compete with Microsoft's RDP.
I would therefore look for products that have both server and client components and that use a non-VNC protocol. Below are some such products that you may try:
Xpra
An open-source multi-platform persistent remote display server and client for forwarding applications and desktop screens. Among itsEnhancementsis listed "Hardware accelerated H264 encoding (NVENC)", so it may be fast enough.Apache Guacamole
A clientless remote desktop gateway whose viewer is any browser that supports HTML5. It supports standard protocols like VNC, RDP, and SSH. As it supports the RDP protocol it might be fast enough, although the documentation does not mention which version of RDP.Setup documentationTeamViewer
Perhaps the best-known remote screen product, cross-platform but not open-source. I have used it many times, and it always was very responsive and feature-rich.
I will say you use rdesktop command but it seems that this project will not have a mantainer. Very light software to connect via RDP over Linux shell.
I suggest you use Remmina if rdesktop cannot be find at Ubuntu 18, give a try:
I have used these two ones at work when I have to access Windows Servers at my Ubuntu desktop and I always have a good impression of rdesktop a free reverse engineering of RDP protocol. At this link bellow you can find reference for this.
7You could try xrdp with tigervnc-server, but you will need to adjust screen resolution, etc. to suit your needs. I can't take credit for this suggestion because I found it on It'zGeek.
Well since this is from January, i found this trying to use RDP on a far away server on AWS on linux.
xRDP works great on LAN scenarios per example even on WAN, but if u have a server that its very far away with high latency as expected, it fails, i tried to tweak xRDP without any improvement, as it states here its slow compared to Windows RDP, even on same latency and on same machine.
I tried VNC it was same slow.
First i thought it was something related from GNOME, LXDE, LXQT, XFCE well using xRDP it was faster on those light desktops, but again its not that responsive as you expect from windows side.
What u needed is X2GO that should do it i read about this here:
here it states why RDP from Windows its better than linux counterparts, but also there are some alternatives to achieve that smooth/feeling from windows RDP on linux, what u need its something using NX protocol, like Nomachine,Xpra and i found X2GO also use this.
it seems Xpra its a much better solution but since i couldnt move forward adding the PPK to the Xpra interface (Since EC2 servers on AWS uses this) and X2GO was so easy to use, just install and works, well X2GO its the winner for me
Marlon may be correct ... the issue may be on the server side. Perhaps you are limited by your hardware, as in some systems are assisted by use of the GPU for hardware acceleration (on the server). If you figure it out, please let us know so that we can benefit too.
An open-source alternative to RDP on linux, which is comparable to Teamviewer (but still in development) is rustdesk (rustdesk.com)
The usability is like Teamviewer with comparable performace. It is not like RDP on windows, but there seems to be nothing alike in terms of performance and integration.
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