Using the RDP server on Linux doesn't really gain you much over VNC (other
than making it easier for Windows clients to connect). The best thing about
RDP on Windows is that it hooks the graphics layer to send drawing
primitives and instructions instead of just updating rectangles of pixels,
which is very efficient. It has several levels of protocol though, and the
lowest is pretty much VNC (remote framebuffer). The smarter versions of the
protocol have never been implemented on Linux and so the RDP server just
wraps VNC and tells the client to fall back to the lowest protocol level.

I agree that remote X11 is very useful but I've always found that it works
best for simple (dare I say old fashioned?) X11 apps like xterm and worst
for graphically complex things like browsers. It's just about usable over a
good WAN connection for simple jobs but seems to be very sensitive to
latency, and the effect is multiplied for complex applications.

One tool that I've found to work very well is x2go. I'm not sure if it's
available for the Pi but I've used it quite a lot on desktop machines.
There's a Windows client which works well too.

http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php

It's not faultless. Not all features seem to work perfectly, but it's
pretty good.

On 19 April 2015 at 10:54, Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Terry,
>
> > I fixed my problem by completely removing xrdp from the Pi (including
> > a purge) and re-installing it.
>
> That seems to match http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314336 and
> the bugs it links to.  Something about whether xrdp pulls in vnc4server,
> bad, or tightvncserver, good.
>
> There should also be /var/log/sesman.* or similar that would hopefully
> give more details than that dreary `error - problem connecting' in the
> GUI.
>
> WRT xrdp's and sesman's status, if you find a process ID then you can
> list what IPv4 interfaces and sockets they are listening on, e.g.
> perhaps it's only loopback.  Here's an example with part of Postfix,
> showing it listening for incoming SMTP connections only on the loopback
> interface.
>
>     $ sudo lsof -a -p `pidof master` -i 4
>     COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
>     master  1304 root   12u  IPv4   8665      0t0  TCP
> localhost.localdomain:smtp (LISTEN)
>     $
>
> Not the problem this time as a re-install wouldn't have helped.  The
> purge removed /etc configuration files;  perhaps there was something
> there amiss.
>
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
> --
> Next meeting:  Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2015-05-05 20:00
> Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ...  http://dorset.lug.org.uk/
> New thread:  mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING
> Reporting bugs well:  http://goo.gl/4Xue     / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR
>
--
Next meeting:  Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2015-05-05 20:00
Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ...  http://dorset.lug.org.uk/
New thread:  mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk / CHECK IF YOU'RE REPLYING
Reporting bugs well:  http://goo.gl/4Xue     / TO THE LIST OR THE AUTHOR

Reply via email to