Remote display connections

Configuring your system - Remote display connections

Windows users will be familiar with remote desktop, which uses the RDP protocol. There are a number of linux clients that provide connectivity using RDP. Before you continue, you may want to ensure the rdesktop USE flag is set in your /etc/make.conf, or per-package as below.

The rdesktop package provides command-line functionality for RDP connections. There is a gtk based frontend for the redesktop package called grdesktop, which is what we will focus on here.

$ sudo emerge -av grdesktop

Once the emerge has completed, you can start the gui and create an RDP connection using the Network -> Remotedesktop Client item in your menu.

= NX Client

NX is a free, open-source remote display suite founded by the good folks at http://www.nomachine.org . Client ports exist for all major operating systems, but the server portion is currently for Linux only. NX functions in basically the same way RDP does, except in the fact that it uses ssh for its tunneling rather than a distinct protocol using the default RDP port, 3389.

$ sudo emerge -av nxclient

As with the rdesktop client, you can access the nx client via the same area of your menu.