[NTLUG:Discuss] rdesktop

[MadHat]

For those of you like me that have to use some other OSs for work, or
what ever reason, the subject of remote control is always an issue.  VNC
has been one option, but frankly the stability and security have been
lacking, and on slower speed networks, can be almost unusable.  Of
course controlling a Unix desktop from a non-unix desktop has always
been fairly simple with X and port forwarding, tunneling and other
means.  But trying to go the other direction....  
I use Linux as my desktop, but find that I have to fall back to a
Windows box for some tasks at work and at home.  I have found that
Terminal Services for Windows is actually quite nice, in that it does
not take over the existing session, as it has a virtual desktop it
creates.  The speed is decent and seems fairly secure as compared to
some other methods.  What is nice is that with rdesktop
(http://www.rdesktop.org) I can use the existing TS on my Windows 2K/XP
boxes, it is open source and like the website states "Unlike Citrix ICA,
no server extensions are required."  I always had issues getting Citrix
to work anyway.

Anyway, I have had good luck with this and wanted to pass it on.  It is
only 98K compiled and the source is only 80K (tgz).  It took less that 1
minute to compile on my P3 650MHz notebook.  It uses about 1.2K of
resident memory (according to top).   So far no issues and works fine
with a small footprint.  No GUI for startup, but that would be easy to
do.


-- 
MadHat at Unspecific.com
"Anyone who understands Linux/Unix, really understands the universe.
 Anyone who understands Windows, really understands Windows."
          - Richard Thieme, DefCon 10, 2002