Full-featured RDP client - FreeRDP

It's no secret that in the modern world without Microsoft products can hardly do. However, in many cases, it turns out that it is much more efficient to use GNU / Linux- based systems on work computers, rather than Windows. This greatly simplifies administration and reduces costs, while providing users with much more easily accessible functionality. But what to do with those applications that run only under Windows and for which there is no suitable counterpart in the world of Linux? Since there is usually a unit of such applications (otherwise there is simply no point in putting Linux on a desktop computer), the use of terminal servers running under Microsoft's OS can be a sensible choice. In addition, Linux is best suited for any thin clients, since there is simply no adequate version of Windows for them.

In any case, you must be able to connect to terminal servers Windows. For this, MS developed its own remote desktop protocol - RDP . However, until recently, there was a single open client for Linux to work with this protocol - rdesktop . Unfortunately, its development has long ceased, and it is experiencing enormous difficulties in interacting with modern versions of Windows.

But recently, quietly and imperceptibly, the rdesktop project was forked, with the result that a new open RDP client, FreeRDP, was born . The first release of this program at once fixed most of the known problems of rdesktop, and the project continues to evolve. For some reason, the appearance of such a useful application was ignored, so I decided to publish this post in order to somehow fix this situation and tell everyone about the existence of a normal RDP client for Linux. Under the cut - a description of the features of FreeRDP and a little about the excellent GUI Remmina for it.
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FreeRDP

Official site of the project - www.freerdp.com

There you can also find a description of the capabilities of the current version and future plans. The main differences from rdesktop:

• Produced significant code refactoring. The user interface is completely rewritten and separated from the main library, the plugin system is implemented.
• The code is maximally aligned with the Microsoft RDP specification and is commented on in detail.
• Rewritten work with the keyboard - no more problems with layouts.
• Rewritten work with printers, sound and other devices and services that are being sent.
• Fixed issues with the pointer and licenses when connecting to a Windows 2008 terminal server.
• Implemented caching graphics (bitmap caching), which can significantly improve performance.

Broken and removed rdesktop feature:

• There is currently no support for forwarding COM ports and support for smart cards.
• Removed support for SeamlessRDP mode in favor of RemoteApp implementation, which, however, has not yet been realized either.

Remmina

In addition, one of the most convenient graphical remote desktop connection managers Remmina from version 0.8 switched to using FreeRDP as an RDP client.

Version 0.8 also supports Windows .rdp files, all protocols are now separate plug-ins, added support for IPv6 and made many minor improvements and bug fixes.

Download the latest versions of FreeRDP and Remmina from official sites:

• Remmina official website
• FreeRDP official website

For Ubuntu users, the PPR repository from the FreeRDP developer and Remmina is also available with the latest versions of these programs:

• https://launchpad.net/~llyzs/+archive/ppa