Patrick Petit's Weblog

Rdesktop on Solaris

I like my Solaris workstation for doing certain things, like running server applications and in general develop software. I grown up with UNIX, so I guess I am avert to `\` pathname notation, and many other craps that primes to “what the hell is going on with that system !@#”. With UNIX I am in control. But, I like Windows XP for what it is good at. A desktop system. Why? Because I can do things on it, I can't easily do on other systemes including Linux like, listening or watching Windows Media Player programs (sorry most of my favorite radios emit on that format only), get cleverly aggregated feeds using Google's Desktop, search my Google's indexes, play with an endless list of programs I can download and install in few clicks. It's a dilemma! Even more so, since I also like my SunRay 1G thin-client, which drives very smoothly and silently my ultra cool 24.1-Inch LCD Flat Panel Monitor!

I found my Nirvana in rdesktop. "Rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server, capable of natively speaking its Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user's NT desktop". It happens that with Windows XP Professional you can enable (in standard) remote desktop by going to Control Panel>System>Remote and check the “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer” box. Note that free patches are available for older versions of Windows. Using, rdesktop, I can overlay any X11 window with Windows's root and copy-paste from one another. See by yourself.<p>

<p>Another cool thing about rdesktop is that you can redirect your PC's devices (disk, serial port, printer, sound, ...) to your local station. For instance, I plugged the audio device on my SunRay (where I am seating) and directed rdesktop to play music there.

rdesktop -g workarea -xan -E -B -r sound:local 

For more info about rdesktop check the http://www.rdesktop.org/ URL or download the software from SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdesktop/. It compiles smoothly on Solaris SPARC.

A future post will discuss the usage and setup of FreeNX, yet another  open-source way to access  a remote Solaris or Linux desktop via the Internet.

Posted at 07:18PM Nov 13, 2006 by ppetitsm in Sun  |  Comments[1]