ThinLinc

I've been looking for a fast and reliable remote desktop solution so that I can work remotely. My work is running on Ubuntu precise, and I have tried every single linux remote solution possible: x2go, freeNX, VNC, RDP, NoMachine, etc. They would all be incredibly slow, or would have massive artifact compression making text hard to read. Since my work involves programming, I need the text to clear.

That was until I found ThinLinc. Not only is it free to personal and commercial up to 12 concurrent users. It was one of the most easy to setup on Ubuntu. It has a cool web administration interface where you can see active sessions, load, etc. Most importantly though, it is fast and reliable!

Working from a coffee shop now feels like I'm at work in front of my computer. The text is sharp and clear. The client software is easy to install on Windows, OSX or Linux, and work very well. If you've ever used Windows RDP client, it's very similar in quality and simplicity.

It supports seamless mode, where you can launch a single application, and it's windowed inside your own OS. It's not quite remote X, in that the app will be double windowed, but it manages to make the external window as minimally intrusive as possible, so you get a pretty decent seamless feel, where you can resize the window, minimize, maximize, full screen, etc.

It is amazing at grabbing the keyboard and accurately sending all of my key strokes. This was a problem on a lot of other remote desktop solution. NoMachine for example would mess up my Alt key and the like.

It allows remote sessions, so I now actually always work from within ThinLinc. When at my work office computer, I connect to my ThinLinc session with the ThinLinc client. When away from the office, I connect to the same session from my laptop. It seamlessly resizes the resolution between the two!

Don't be put off by the initial feeling that this is a big server app made for large scale installs. It works just as well for single user usage. I recommend it over all the others.