Rdesktop

Infobox_Software
name = rdesktop



caption =
developer = rdesktop team
latest_release_version = 1.6.0
latest_release_date = May 10, 2008
operating_system = Unix-like
genre = Microsoft Terminal Services client
license = GPL
website = [http://www.rdesktop.org/ www.rdesktop.org]

rdesktop is a free, open source client for Microsoft's proprietary RDP protocol. It is released under the GNU General Public License and is available on Unix-like systems such as BSD and Linux.

As of July 2008, rdesktop implements a large subset of the RDP 5 protocol, including:
* Bitmap caching
* Brush caching (CVS version)
* File system, audio, serial port and printer port redirection
* Mappings for most international keyboards
* Stream compression and encryption
* Automatic authentication
* Smartcard support

rdesktop also has features with no direct analogue in the official Microsoft RDP client:
* A "seamless" mode (in which server-side windows are one-to-one mapped to X11 windows on the client)

Note: There are patches available to improve the "seamless" mode with connection sharing, allowing multiple remote applications to appear in this mode.

Still unimplemented are:
* Remote Assistance requests (the protocol for which remains undocumented)
* USB device redirection

Support for the additional features available in RDP 5.1 and RDP 6 (including multi-head display spanning) also have not yet been implemented.

Use

rdesktop is commonly used on desktop Linux installations to connect to Microsoft Windows computers running Terminal Services, including Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Terminal Server, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. The program has also been integrated into several thin client Linux distributions like Thinstation [http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/ThIndex] . It has also been integrated into some thin client appliances.

See also

*Comparison of remote desktop software
*VNC
*xrdp
*Tsclient
*jrdesktop - Java Remote Desktop

References

External links

* [http://www.rdesktop.org/ rdesktop website]
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/krdesktop/ KDE front-end for rdesktop]
* [http://xrdp.sourceforge.net xrdp] - RDP server for Unix, based on rdesktop
* [http://cord.sourceforge.net/ CoRD] - A native Cocoa interface for the OS X port of rdesktop.
* [http://properjavardp.sourceforge.net/ properJavaRDP] - rdesktop based Free Java Remote Desktop Connection Client