cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
I love my (Arch) Linux setup and really want to leave Windows behind, but I do very often find myself having to boot into my backup Windows install sadly. And once I boot into Windows it’s really tough to pack up all my stuff and switch back to Linux. It’s a bit of an awkward position, and honestly it’s not really Linux’s fault, but Windows’. But I’d still love to hear any suggestions.
I still need Remote Desktop (RDP) for my work, which still runs exclusively Windows. Plus for my work I need to share a game controller over that RDP connection too, for which even on Windows the support is extremely thin, but still works and is free. On Linux my only option is to use some USB sharing software that supports both Windows and Linux and has a license of 160 dollars a year (which is crazy), or write my own (which I could do, but it’d take a while).
On Linux, Remmina and FreeRDP just seem to work worse than it does on Windows. It stutters and freezes for long periods, making it just generally unusable since I need a stable 30+ fps stream. I’m not sure if I just picked a wrong RDP replacement, but everyone seemed to recommend this. Using anything other than RDP isn’t really an option unless I can justify it heavily to someone who is more likely to see me using Linux as an impediment, and I basically can’t work with what’s available for RDP on Linux…
Yea I had issues with RDP too until I got a “good enough” setup using freerdp with a bunch of command line arguments/config settings to make it fast enough for me to tolerate. Have a play around with those and see if you can get it to a tolerable state.
Out of the box it was indeed pretty much unusable for me but I really don’t tolerate latency much at all.
Good suggestion. Knowing it’s at least possible to get it decent enough is a big help.
Well, your mileage may vary of course, it depends a lot on the connection between you and the endpoint as well as your own tolerance - it was never 100% as fast as on Windows but I think I got it from like 50% at the start, to like 85-90% as good, something like that. I think there were a bunch of command line switches that were marked as beta or something that helped quite a bit.
Sunshine/Moonlight are FOSS, highly performant RDP software that is well supported on Linux as well as Windows and includes game controller support. They are designed for game streaming but I regularly use it as a remote desktop software for remote working.
Of course, depending on your specific situation, it might not work. It isn’t compatible with Microsoft RDP (it uses Nvidia’s game streaming protocol, with Sunshine as the host and Moonlight as the remote). Also game controller support is done by creating a generic virtual game controller on the host, so the details of what specific controller you are using are lost.
Sounds promising, thanks for the suggestion. But yeah unfortunately using Microsoft RDP is basically a hard requirement, unless I can convince someone in IT to make an exception. But if it does exactly what I need I might have a case.
Steam Link already figured this one out
Not sure how? As far as Steam explains it, it only works on Steam games, which isn’t what I’m looking for. I’m not gaming on my RDP connection, and not interacting with Steam at all.