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GROUP TEST REMOTE DESKTOP CLIENTS

REMOTE DESKTOP CLIENTS GROUP TEST Tired of hopping from one computer to another, Mayank Sharma tests options that allow him to control all his computers remotely.

On Test Remote desktop clients hen you think of remote remote desktop. For this group test access the first thing we’ve set up the Vino VNC server URL http://freerdp.github.io/Remmina Wthat comes to mind is on a Mint machine and a VERSION 1.1.1 SSH. System admins have been TightVNC server on a LICENCE GNU GPL using it since time immemorial to and on a .1 box. Many of Can this do-it-all ward off the mount remote directories, back up the clients on test support multiple competition? remote servers, spring-clean protocols. The exceptions are the remote databases, and even run two proprietary clients, which we’ll KRDC remote GUI apps. You probably use connect to with their own servers. URL www..org/applications/ SSH to interact with your Raspberry A good remote desktop client /krdc Pi anchored behind the TV. should be responsive, and we’ll rate VERSION 4.14.1 However, there are times when it higher than a client that does a LICENCE GNU GPL you need to remotely access the wonderful job of replicating the Does KDE’s default app do enough? complete desktop session rather remote desktop in true colour but than just a single app. Perhaps you takes ages to register clicks and want to handhold the person on key presses. We’ll also keep an eye the other end through installing and out for related features such as the URL https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/ using a complex piece of graphical ability to encrypt connections and Vinagre VERSION 3.12.2 software, or want to tweak settings transfer files and audio along with LICENCE GNU GPL on a Windows machine from the the remote desktop. ...does Gnome’s? comfort of your Linux distro. That’s The clients and servers are where all running inside our network comes in handy. Using these nifty connected via Wi-Fi. While for TightVNC little applications you can remotely maximum performance you’d URL www..com access and operate a computer want them to be connected via VERSION 2.7.10 from all sorts of devices. Gigabit LAN cables, it rules out the LICENCE GNU GPL There are various protocols that all-important convenience factor for Is the once popular app keeping up are designed to interact with a most readers. with the times?

NoMachine NX “There are times when you need to access URL www.nomachine.com the whole desktop, not just one app.” VERSION 4.3.30 LICENCE Freeware Is it the best NX client out there? Protocol soup

VNC or Virtual Network is vendor. Then there’s ’s one of the most popular mechanisms proprietary TeamViewer for accessing a remote desktop. At its (RDP). While the RDP server is only URL www..com heart is the RFB (Remote Framebuffer) available for the Windows platform, protocol, which works at the framebuffer there are clients for Windows, Linux, VERSION 10.0 level and is therefore supported by all Mac OS X, Android, iOS and other License: Freeware platforms. One big advantage of the platforms. Besides these, several Does it offer more than just protocol is that you can connect to a proprietary remote desktop solutions convenience? VNC server with a client from a different have their own proprietary protocols.

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Getting started with The basics behind this essential technique.

remote desktop sharing session desktop. The remote machine can host this remote desktop servers work on different involves a server and a client. The connection on a local network or even over ports. For example, by default the VNC Aserver component is installed on the the internet. Furthermore, the host computer server listens on port 5900 for connections remote machine that you want to access can also hand over control of the keyboard and on port 5800 for download requests. and the client component is installed on the and mouse to the other party. In this case, all If you use a router, you must configure local machine, or even on a mobile device keystrokes and mouse clicks on the client it to forward connections if you want to such as a tablet. are registered on the server as if they were connect to a remote desktop over the In a typical desktop sharing session, the actually performed on the remote machine. internet. Remember that in order to remote computer (also known as the host, You’ll also have to poke holes in the establish a remote connection, both as it’s hosting the session) enables a user to on the remote host machine to make the host and the client have to use the view the contents of the host computer’s sure it allows the client to connect. Different same protocol. Remmina Maximum performance.

ne of the best things about Remmina is that the app supports a variety of Oprotocols including VNC, RDP, NX, SSH and more. It has a simple interface, and maintains a list of profiles, and you can organise connections in separate groups. Before you begin, you’ll have to create a profile and define the parameters before you can connect to a remote server. At the very least, you’ll have to select a protocol from a drop-down list and enter the IP address of the server. Optionally you can define other parameters as well that vary depending on Remmina is a GTK app and will bring along a lot of baggage when installed on a KDE desktop. the protocol being used. For example, for VNC connections, you can optionally choose the remote connection. There’s a hidden Conversely, when connected to a dual- the colour depth and quality of the toolbar at the top of the screen which gets core Mint box with full-HD resolution, the connection. You also get checkboxes to you all this control in the full-screen mode. game was playable even at the best quality toggle some quick settings like starting a Remmina houses default remote setting. However, video playback wasn’t simple View Only session, disable connection settings under its Preferences watchable at any quality setting – at the encryption, and more. If you’re connecting to window. Here you can tweak some auto lowest quality level the video was less jerky a NX or a RDP server, you can also specify a save settings for the connections, define but the colours were all wrong; at the other resolution for the remote desktop. default connection resolution and custom end of the quality setting the colours were You can use the app in window mode as hotkeys. RDP users gets a bunch of perfect but the the video was skipping well as full-screen mode. Remmina has a additional options to help trim down the frames. Also Remmina doesn’t transfer audio tabbed interface that enables you manage size of the remote desktop stream, such as and lacks the ability to transfer files. multiple remote desktop sessions from a the ability to turn off the wallpaper, menu We could easily scroll through lightweight single window. When connected you get a animations, cursor shadow and more. PDFs at best quality, while PDFs with lots bunch of buttons for common tasks such of images were best scrolled through at as switching to full-screen mode, or to the Stable performer lower quality levels and were readable at the scaled mode in case the remote desktop To test its responsiveness, we tried playing a lowest setting. Remmina is available in the doesn’t fit. You also get a button to change Snake-like game on the remote desktop. official repositories of most popular distros. the quality of the connection. Unlike other When connected to the puny little Raspberry open source apps, Remmina changes the Pi, the game was playable but the VERDICT Impresses with its list of colour depth of the remote desktop of the fly, keystrokes were delayed by a block or two. supported protocols, which is a definite plus. There’s also a button Changing to a lower quality level didn’t have features and performance. that sends all the keyboard commands to any noticeable impact on this delay.

www.linuxvoice.com 59 GROUP TEST REMOTE DESKTOP CLIENTS Krdc Krude but effective.

rdc is KDE’s default remote And that’s it. Depending on the three desktop client and supports the settings, Krdc works out the other KVNC and RDP protocols. The details for the connection. The app’s app does a nice job of handling set of choices is rather limited, but you connections, with the main interface do get the option to manually specify a showing a history of connections with resolution for the session. the recently accessed servers at the Krdc lists all connected remote top. You can also arrange the list by the computers in different tabs. From number of visits to a server. You can within a connection, you get buttons to even bookmark connections you want switch to full screen, scale the remote to use more often. display to fit the local resolution, take Krdc doesn’t offer the option to route the connection Although the main interface might a screenshot of the remote display, through a SSH channel. seem overwhelming to a new user, with change the session into a view-only a handful of menus and buttons, it’s mode, and send all keyboard inputs to test PDFs were readable and scrolled fairly simple to operate. To establish a the remote computer. nicely as well. However, performance connection, you only need to select a We connected to another computer degraded sharply when we selected the protocol and enter the IP address of the on the local LAN using the default High quality option which is suggested remote machine you wish to connect to. medium setting. Videos played for LAN computers. Inversely, the Low This brings up the host configuration flawlessly albeit without sound, and our quality wasn’t of much use as the box, from where you have to select a colours and fonts rendered poorly. quality setting. The default is Medium, which is claimed to be suitable for DSL, “Krdc’s main interface might VERDICT cable, and fast internet connections. A useful client for KDE seem overwhelming, but it’s users who use VNC There’s also high quality for LAN and occasionally. low quality for slower connections. fairly simple to operate.” Vinagre Not nearly as versatile as vinegar.

inagre, also known simply as if you have the resources to bear the Remote Desktop Viewer, is processing overhead. VGnome’s default client for Another useful option is the ability viewing remote desktops and supports to tunnel the VNC connection through the VNC, RDP, SPICE and SSH an SSH server. To establish a secure protocols. It has a minimal interface session make sure you run the SSH The Reverse Connection option simplifies the process of that’s very much like Remmina. server on the remote server that’s also accessing a host behind a firewall. However, there aren’t nearly as many the VNC host. advanced options that are available Also remember that before switching playable at all quality levels and while behind Remmina’s simple GUI. To to the full-screen mode, you should videos played without jerks on the 16 connect all you need to do is pick a enable the keyboard shortcuts option bit High Colour setting they weren’t protocol from the pull-down list and (under the View menu) and then really watchable because of the lack enter its IP address. There’s also a very use the F11 key to switch between of colours. If you went any higher, helpful Find button next to the host fullscreen and window mode. During the videos became jerky and started address field that hunts for active an active remote desktop session, you skipping frames. Also, Vinagre doesn’t servers on the local network. can stop sending keyboard and mouse send audio, and we had to disconnect Also much like Remmina, you get to the remote desktop and effectively to change the quality setting. optional checkboxes for starting a full- turn it into a view-only session. The screen session, a view-only or a scaled interface also includes a button to VERDICT window. You also have the ability to send the famous three-finger salute Vinagre is to Gnome what Krdc is to KDE – a usable select a colour depth from 24-bit true (Ctrl+Alt+Del) to the remote desktop. default for occasional colour to three-bit ultra-low colour. You Performance wise, the app is pretty use. can also enable JPEG compression mediocre. The Snake game was

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TightVNC Never let go of your computers. Other options

here are several other remote desktop clients and solutions that you can use. TWhile we have only covered the most popular and actively developed VNC clients, there are several others. There’s RealVNC, which is often touted as the official VNC client. You can use it for free for a limited number of connections after registering on its website. Other VNC clients include TigerVNC, TurboVNC and . If you’re using Microsoft’s RDP server, you can connect to it using the client. There’s also the open source Neatx server based on NoMachine’s NX technology, and Google’s tool which is currently in beta for Linux. If you aren’t averse to proprietary solutions, there are several The project has recently released an Android client optimised for mobile internet connections. paid and freeware solutions such as Bomgar and Mikogo. One solution that uses remote desktop ightVNC is one of the oldest VNC as its own TightVNC server. When using sharing technology is iTALC. It is an open client that’s still in development Vino, we had to turn off encryption on the source solution for remotely accessing, Tand is the progenitor of many server before TightVNC would connect to controlling and managing classroom popular VNC clients with different goals. the server. It also correctly autodetected computers and uses the RFB protocol. Also, if The TightVNC project doesn’t just produce colour depth. Video playback without the you just wish to access a single app and care a client. They also release a VNC server, audio was watchable and the Snake game more about security than zippyness then you which is what we use on the Raspberry Pi. was playable without any issues. can just enable X11 forwarding over SSH. The project uses its own enhanced version of VNC’s RFB protocol. The Some fiddling required project has added extensions to the RFB When using TightVNC server, we had protocol to improve performance over low to alter the default config file to show bandwidth connections. TightVNC gets the server’s MATE window manager. its name from the fact that it encodes We had to do a similar modification to the VNC stream more tightly by using view ’s Unity desktop as well. a combination of the JPEG and This connection uses the Tight protocol, compression mechanisms. However, although we didn’t notice any remarkable this compression shouldn’t impose improvements. One major difference is any performance penalties on modern that the TightVNC server shares a new processors. In fact, the official Raspberry desktop, while Vino shares the same Pi documentation asks users to run the desktop that’s currently on the remote TightVNC server to set up a VNC on the desktop. Raspberry Pi. In addition to the lack of audio from the One of the best things about TightVNC remote desktop, there’s also no means is that it is still compatible with other to chat with the user on the other end. implementations of VNC. However to use Furthermore, the file sharing facility is its tight encoding and gain full advantage only supported on the Windows platform. of its enhancements you must use You wouldn’t be able to transfer files even TightVNC at both end of the connection. if you use the TightVNC Linux client to The TightVNC client for Linux is written in connect to the server on Windows. Java that doesn’t need to be installed – just double click on the .jar file to launch VERDICT the client (assuming you have installed A decent performer that covers all your the JRE). It works fine with the OpenJDK multi-platform Google Play has several clients for accessing JRE. We tested the TightVNC client by multi-device bases. remote desktops on your Android device. connecting it to the Vino server as well

www.linuxvoice.com 61 GROUP TEST REMOTE DESKTOP CLIENTS NoMachine NX vs TeamViewer Cross-platform proprietary freeware at their best.

oMachine NX uses the NX from the remote desktop. You can protocol that tunnels a remote mount a remote disk either as public, NX session across an SSH which mounts it in /media or private encrypted channel. The protocol also which mounts it on the user’s desktop. encodes and compresses data to Similarly, you can also manage local minimise the bandwidth required. This and remote printers and USB devices allows it to do some cool things such including removable disks, scanners, as pipe audio from the remote server to web cams and more. Performance- the local client. wise NoMachine NX is phenomenal. The tool can automatically pick up Video playback, games and PDFs any NX servers that are accepting look and work as if you are operating NoMachine places an icon in the system tray that gives connections running on the LAN. You them on the local computer. There’s you access to tools such as the whiteboard, which can be can also define a new connection by no noticeable lag and the images and used for scribbling instant messages. specifying its IP address and the login video are very crisp. credentials that you specified while launch the client and enter the unique setting up the server. NoMachine will One for the team numeric code displayed on the machine then detect the remote resolution and TeamViewer is perhaps one of the most you wish to connect to. If you’re offer to change it to match the local recognisable names in the remote accessing your own remote computer, resolution. By default, it’ll forward audio desktop domain and the app is used by you can set up a and log in to the local client and mute it on the several major enterprises. However, its unattended. If you are handholding server, but you get the option to unmute Linux client isn’t nearly as spectacular. another TeamViewer user, all you need it on the server as well. In fact, TeamViewer’s Linux client still from them is their unique code and the Once connected you can access all runs with the help of Wine, like its initial randomly generated password that’ll be its features from the Session menu, version several years ago. valid only for the current session. which is accessed from the page peel The client offers more features However, the quality of the in the top-right corner of the window. than you get with the usual open connection is very poor. You can use The menu gives you access to some source remote desktop clients, and it to either render a nice desktop at useful features, such as the ability TeamViewer uses its own proprietary to access a device such as a disk, or protocol that connects clients through printer, stream the mic input to the a central server. One obvious advantage “Video playback, games and remote server, and record the remote of this scheme is that you can connect PDFs look and work as if they desktop in a WebM video. to a remote desktop from anywhere, NoMachine lets you export the even those behind firewalls, without are on the local computer.” contents of a local disk to the remote messing with routers or setting up port machine or import the remote disk forwarding. a slow frame rate or an unreadable into the local desktop. You can also TeamViewer is one of the most desktop at a usable speed. For what copy files by dragging them to and convenient apps to set up and use. Just it’s worth, TeamViewer does offer a few extra features such as a text and video chat client, the ability to transfer files as well as a VoIP service. The client can also host group meetings. Some features though, such as the ability to invite other users into a session, require you to sign into a TeamViewer account. Like NoMachine, you can also record a session in TeamViewer’s own .tvs format. But we couldn’t get the option to convert it into AVI format even after following the manual.

VERDICT NOMACHINE NX The TEAMVIEWER It might best remote desktop be a big name on solution for the Windows but on Linux Both NoMachine and TeamViewer can be installed on any Linux distribution, and have pragmatic user. it’s just a bit meh. precompiled binaries for RPM- and Deb-based distros.

62 www.linuxvoice.com REMOTE DESKTOP CLIENTS GROUP TEST OUR VERDICT Remote desktop clients

DE’s Krdc and Gnome’s change the quality settings of the Vinagre are good defaults connection on the fly. All things Kfor their respective considered, Remmina is a wonderful desktops and both don’t support remote desktop client and would NX connections. One big turn off serve you well if you can live with Krdc is the limited flexibility without extra features such as the with the quality settings which ability to transfer files really just left us with only one That leaves us with the two At least the NX protocol is open. usable quality option. Vinagre didn’t proprietary clients. TeamViewer fare much better with its mediocre turned out to be a disappointment. 1st NoMachine NX 4.3.30 performance. Its ease of use doesn’t outweigh Licence Freeware Version 4.3.30 TightVNC is the only Java app its poor performance and we can’t on test. The app performed well recommend it for any use case. www.nomachine.com even when used with other VNC NoMachine NX surprised us too, done right. The quality is so good, we have servers. One big advantage of pleasantly, that is. We haven’t yet to recommend it even though it isn’t . the app is that it’s cross-platform awarded a Linux Voice Group Test and even has mobile clients. It’s to a proprietary app, but NoMachine 2nd Remmina 1.1.1 “It’s proprietary, but NoMachine NX is Licence GNU GPL Version 1.1.1 http://freerdp.github.io/Remmina way ahead of everything out there.” Supports the widest range of protocols and performs well. the recommended server for the NX is way ahead of everything out Raspberry Pi, and if you’re using it there. The open source clients do 3rd TightVNC 2.7.10 on the Pi you should use the client their bit too and depending on your Licence GNU GPL Version 2.7.10 to take advantage of the protocol’s use case, might be the perfect tight compression. tool for many of you. However www.tightvnc.com However, for maximum coverage they aren’t as comprehensive as Best coupled with its own server that’s tuned to make best use there’s no beating Remmina. The NoMachine NX, which will work for of limited resources. client supports the widest range all types of use cases. You can use of protocols and will connect it to simply access your remote 4th Krdc 4.14.1 to all kinds of remote desktop desktop or any peripherals attached Licence GNU GPL Version 4.14.1 servers. The app scores well in to it or use it to collaborate with the performance department as another remote user over the www.kde.org/applications/internet/krdc well and gives you the flexibility to internet without much fuss. Good default client for simple use.

VNC RDP NX File Transfer Audio Support 5th Vinagre 3.12.2 Remmina Y Y Y N N Licence GNU GPL Version 3.12.2

Krdc Y Y N N N https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Vinagre Another good default for occasional use. Vinagre Y Y N N N

TightVNC Y N N N N 6th TeamViewer 10 Licence Freeware Version 10.0 NoMachine NX N N Y Y Y www.teamviewer.com TeamViewer N N N Y N Overshadowed by every client in terms of performance.

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