Rdesktop

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Related articles

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.

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 2000/XP/Vista/Win7 RDP server to remotely administrate the Windows box.

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 rdesktop from the official repositories.

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
-x l Uses the "lan" quality experience level, see the man page for additional options
-r sound:off Redirects sound generated on the server to null
-u windowsuser This defines the username to use when logging into the Windows box
98.180.102.33:3389 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 -g 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 /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the following line to it, or uncomment the appropriate line: 

wins support = yes

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

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

Supplying missing cursors

See Cursor themes#Supplying missing cursors.

See also