
Ask HN: Are any remote desktop solutions good enough for full-time use? - filleokus
I&#x27;m thinking about having a beefy desktop computer at home and using some kind of remote desktop solution to connect to it from other places (e.g co-working spaces).<p>I have good bandwidth (250+ Mbit both ways) with low latency (&lt; 10 ms) between the computers.<p>Is there any solution that&#x27;s good enough for 100% full-time use. I&#x27;m thinking about stuff like high DPI (&quot;retina&quot;) resolutions, transfer of audio input and output and just overall good enough quality and latency to not get annoyed by it.<p>The computer at home is probably going to running macOS, and I would preferably have a solution where the client can be run on macOS or maybe linux.<p>Does anyone have experience with a solution like this?
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algorithm_dk
Buy a Steam Link and a raspberry pi, and two usb eth adapters, create a
ZeroTier network and configure the pi (openwrt) to get internet from one of
the adapters and share both the internet connection and the zerotier
connection over the second adapter. Configure the zerotier network on your
computer and set ul Steam In-House streaming. Then you can take the pi and
steam link anywhere, plug a mouse, keyboard and screen, and use your computer.
I get 60fps at 1080p and no noticeable input lag over the internet (work to
home).

If you use a nvidia card enable "force composition pipeline". There is also a
Steam Link app for Android, and ZT client as well, works great.

~~~
icebraining
Do you need the Link? Couldn't you run Steam on the Pi?

~~~
algorithm_dk
Doesn't work, also the whole thing with Steam is that nvidia granted them
access to their capture API

~~~
algorithm_dk
About band, the steamlink is capped at 100mbps and it still works great

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flarg
Give Chrome Remote Desktop a go - it's pretty convenient and I've used
extensively in the past. My experience has been similar to yours - wanting to
use a cheap laptop when i'm out but access all my data and software on my home
setup. Am pretty sure that Windows RDC and Citrix we're built by the same team
and they work at the OS level - definitely the best performance at the machine
level - but windows only.

TBH it probably is not going to work as well as you hope due to simple latency
and less-than-simple packet routing issues, over and above the capabilities of
the actual software. You would probably gain more by spending some money on
one decent laptop and a standby desktop - and sync'ing them with dropbox &
imap. I know this is not what you asked so feel free to ignore.

~~~
matt_the_bass
I use CRD all the time on a LAN with great success. You barely even know it’s
a Remote Desktop for basic graphics/text. Across the internet it is ok. Slight
latency, but maybe it’s good enough for what you want.

IMO CRD is better than Windows Remote Desktop.

One big plus is it is super easy to use and set up.

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4lun
I use Splashtop
([https://www.splashtop.com/personal](https://www.splashtop.com/personal)) at
work (macOS) to connect to my home PC (Win10). It allows me to keep a nice
divide between work and personal activities. (e.g. I don't log into personal
email or Facebook on my work machine).

I've been able to watch 1080p video and even play some high end games (ones
that don't require full mouse capture) from my home PC with almost no issues
(the odd framedrop here and there). It blew me away the first couple of times
I tried it, having come from using LogMeIn and getting rather poor
performance. Having monitors set to the same resolution at home and work
allows me to seamlessly run the client fullscreen and I commonly forget I'm
using a remote computer.

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ChopSticksPlz
In case of Linux, the best results so far I had with X2Go using the virtual
desktop mode.

More about it here: [https://cepa.io/2018/08/05/building-an-ultimate-remote-
linux...](https://cepa.io/2018/08/05/building-an-ultimate-remote-linux-
workstation/)

For Win & Lin, NoMachine works reasonably okeyish if your link is fast enough
to stream in high quality.

~~~
anotherevan
I use a RaspberryPi running X2Go as a proxy to access work machines from home.
It'll talk RDP or VNC at the remote end to the target desktops, but then
X2Go's protocol over the Internet back to me.

I don't know if you'd get the kind of throughput the OP is after, but it works
well for my needs.

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stephengillie
Were Windows involved at both ends, you could start with RDP. It has many low
bandwidth solutions. It uses local assets on the client to reduce data sent by
the server. It's been the primary method of remotely administrating Windows
servers for over 20 years. And some distros support the protocol now too.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
My experiences with RDP on Linux have been truly excellent. I often spend all
day working on a client's Windows servers from my Ubuntu machine on a 4K
display and the experience is no different to running Windows natively. I use
XFreeRDP FWIW.

~~~
stult
I'm usually running one or two local Windows or Ubuntu VMs on my MacBook while
remoted in to two or three Windows machines with RDP. The local Windows VMs
give me infinitely more trouble, even just considering the memory limitations
of a single laptop. On the other hand, there's honestly no perceptible
difference between the RDP VMs and running Windows natively. I would do all of
my Windows work on them, except I have to ask our sysadmin to spin up any new
VMs on our server and I am constantly building new VM images from scratch.

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bochoh
If you're able to spin up an Apache Guacamole server I highly recommend it. It
has completely changed how I think about remote access to my home network.
[https://guacamole.apache.org](https://guacamole.apache.org)

~~~
walterbell
Does the HTML5 client work well on iOS Safari, e.g. iPad Pro? How well do
video and desktop 3D animations (e.g. Aero, Office widgets) work?

~~~
bochoh
Sorry for the slow response. I've used it only on Safari on my mid-2015
Macbook Pro 15" and it works well. Video is a little choppy but I blame that
on my abysmal 10mbps upload speed on the host network. Desktop animations seem
to work fine as well.

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ddon
Started using Jump Desktop[1], works pretty good. Windows client is free, the
rest of clients you have to pay for, but this is one time fee, which is much
better than TeamViewer and others.

Another option is to use built-in windows and mac desktop sharing options, but
you need to run somewhere in the cloud a VPS for $2-3 a month for reverse SSH
tunnel, and then you can connect to your machines from anywhere.

[1]: [https://jumpdesktop.com/](https://jumpdesktop.com/)

~~~
nonane
Hi,

I work on Jump Desktop. Glad you're using it. If you have any questions /
suggestions - please let me know.

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anilgulecha
If you're mode dev oriented, then I would definitely recommend taking a lok at
Eclipse Che, and Theia IDE.

These will allow you to use the remote machine very productively for dev work
(and you'll have RDP for other things).

I have a hunch many tech sectors will move to this setup in the coming years.

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lpernille
I've commissioning beefy machines on Google Cloud and using Xpra to output the
application windows to my notebook. The advantage over other solutions is that
it's responsive and you don't need the full desktop.

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Insanity
This is a good question!

I've been considering having a similar setup for my wife. She's a chromebook
user and often needs to run software like SPSS that's exclusively to Windows.

I don't have a solution for the OP, but if anyone else is in a similar
situation of needing a Windows machine every now and then this might be
useful.

We went with an Amazon WorkSpace solution, they have clients for a wide range
of devices (chromebook, linux, mac, windows, fire) and you get like 40 hours
for free. (Not nearly enough for full-time use of course, but to run certain
pieces of software it works).

~~~
icebraining
I've used Paperspace (a competitor for WorkSpace) for strategy gaming on a
Thinkpad X201 running Debian, and it worked fine. They don't offer 40h, but
the price per hour seems cheaper ($0.07/h for their basic machine, the Air).

~~~
Insanity
Thanks! Hadn't heard of them but I'll check them out. The gaming option looks
interesting actually :)

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z3t4
Theoretically the best option would be to have hardware that support zero
latency streaming over IP with compression. The only problem is that you also
need dedicated hardware on the other end. But this could work well for example
virtual reality headset/io. With current solutions (VNC et. al), the IO is
converted back and forth many times between different formats, and every step
adds some latency.

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tossaway44
I use Remote Desktop to work on my Windows machines from my Mac on a daily
basis. Although the official client works fine, I prefer to use Jump Desktop
due to its built-in SSH tunneling, and switch between my Surface (which sits
underneath my secondary display) and machines on Azure with touchpad swipes.

RDP works fine at 5K+4K resolution (my iMac has a secondary display) and
everything from Windows is rendered in HIDPI. I do however have the remote
connections set at 16 bit for a little less latency (and the content on
servers is less interesting anyway).

This works well enough for me to do everything (development, office work,
etc.), and also Skype calls (with the audio left on the remote device - again,
my Surface is sitting on my desk, and it has killer microphones and speakers).

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CiTyBear
Hi, I used to use parsec[1]. I had a Windows at home and worked with a macbook
air anywhere the connection was strong enough.

You can even rent an AWS machine if you don't have one at home.

[1]: [https://parsecgaming.com/](https://parsecgaming.com/)

~~~
pftburger
Seconded. Even works for me over a 4G cell connection while on the road.

You can even use it in the browser if you want.
[https://blog.parsecgaming.com/game-streaming-tech-in-the-
bro...](https://blog.parsecgaming.com/game-streaming-tech-in-the-browser-with-
parsec-5b70d0f359bc)

------
mahmoudimus
I tried a ton of solutions, but the one that worked the best for me:

Client: MacOSX with Microsoft Remote Desktop Server: Google Cloud Ubuntu w/
XRDP

I use my mac book to microsoft remote desktop into my server with Xrdp and I
use ratpoison as my wm. I can code in intellij quite well!

Hope this helps

~~~
matt_the_bass
Are you saying that windows Remote Desktop client can be used with non-windows
server? If so does the other way work too?

~~~
lostmsu
Correct, it works either way.

~~~
matt_the_bass
Wow! TIL. Thanks.

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a2tech
Remote Desktop and Citrix desktop sharing are the only really good options.
Neither will deliver your macs desktop experience to you.

VNC is ok and built into OS X but leaves a lot to be desired performance-wise.

~~~
neilalexander
The macOS VNC server seems to perform perfectly fine with macOS clients, but
it performs terribly with any other VNC client. I am guessing they are using
some proprietary compression or something there.

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nextlevelwizard
Not really what you are asking for, but I've been working on a low powered
Windows machine with just Putty-ing (SSH-ing) to my Linux desktop for quite
some time now.

I pipe what Xorg stuff I need through SSH and otherwise I just work in tmux +
vim.

So far only pain point has been downloading stuff via browser on Windows since
I don't have sshfs or any other real-time file transfer setup between the
machines, but that happens rarely enough that I've just put up with psftp

~~~
dijit
I used to do this, but it was _so_ slow!

I wouldn't recommend X11 over SSH to anyone.

~~~
rehemiau
With the compression enabled in config it's decent on a good connection and I
use it often.

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rvijapurapu
I have been using Chrome Remote Desktop for accessing my desktop (Ubuntu) when
I'm away. It does the job well.

While I have used the Mac client, I have not used it as the host yet.

The benefit of Chrome Remote Desktop is the ability to access your desktop
from any computer with Chrome installed using your login credentials. It also
does the audio out, etc very well.

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v4n4d1s
I've been using Apache Guacamole for a few years now to connect to my RDP /
VNC machines at home. One of the biggest points is beeing able to connect to a
machine with a modern browser without using any Plugins. As far as I know
version 1.0.0 is going to be released soon, so just wait for this as the setup
is a huge PITA.

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neomindryan
XRDP server for Linux can be configured to send sound, so I’ve been using that
setup for a cloud dev box. In a pinch, it works reasonably well from an Asus
c101pa chromebook plugged into a 4K monitor.

Edit: forgot to mention that the latest versions of the official RDP client
for macOS, iOS, and Android are pretty good and “just work”.

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Dayshine
Chrome remote desktop works very well for me. With the remote server on a 35Mb
residential connection (so maybe 5Mb up) I can almost play games remotely.

Previously, on an 100Mb symmetrical connection I was able to play games over
it, although the input latency was noticeable.

Works on linux and windows, no idea about OSX.

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peelle
I set up a Linux VNC desktop using a $20/mo digital ocean server. I connected
to it securely over SSH. The setup itself worked fine.

From my apartment with 300/30 I had no issues, but coffee shop internet
varied. If 2 guys started watching YT, the responsiveness dropped fast.

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greypowerOz
previous licensed teamviewer user here.. got driven away by costs to
anydesk.com for remote support, and for a few clients who rdp to work
desktops. it works fine for these needs, might be worth evaluating for
yours.....

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kuratkull
I am doing all my work stuff from home over ZeroTier + SSH + X forwarding. If
you have low latency it works seamlessly. I can have JetBrains IDEs and gvim
open without issues. Or even image viewers and browsers.

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slipwalker
my 2 cents: take a good look at x2go (
[https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php](https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php) )

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d--b
My company is using VMWare. The whole team is on it full time. Works like a
breeze. That one's expensive, but I'm sure alternatives work just as fine.

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blensor
I have always been quite happy with nomachine . It's running on the PC where
my HTC Vive is connected to as I am using this as a monitorless VR PC

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snarfy
I use tigervnc over an ssh tunnel. I'm not watching videos or anything but I
can use visual studio and my opengl 3d printer software.

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HammerJack
Connectwise control is a very nice remote control software. They even have a
free tier I'm using to help family/friends with IT.

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tmaly
I have been using NoMachine on a MacBook Pro for remote work without any
issue.

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avip
I see TeamViewer as the "de facto standard" in that space. It usually works.

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holri
x2go works well for me.

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amaccuish
Massive fan of thinlinc

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rootsudo
Yes, Amazon Workspace.

Expensive though.

