RemoteApp / Seamless RDP Linux Server

Question

I was wondering if there is an implementation of Seamless RDP for Linux servers, preferably Debian or similar, giving the result and experience of Microsoft's RemoteApp. Of course with Linux apps, I mention RemoteApp just for comparing.

I don't want to just forward X with SSH. For what I know, X forwarding over SSH is not the best thing. Also I wish to avoid VNC as is pretty inefficient and I don't want the entire desktop. I'm searching for the same integration that offers Microsoft's RDP / RemoteApp.

The scenario is a powerful Linux server with much RAM, and a quite limited both in RAM and CPU Windows client. So what I want is to take advantage of server resources by doing the hard work on it and only display the GUI, as if it were locally installed, in the client.

I've researched a bit and the closest thing I found was a RDP client for Linux, allowing to use RemoteApp from a Windows server. But as I said, I want to serve Linux apps to a Windows client.

Last but not least, there is a solution that allows GPU processing in server side? Using RDP on Windows servers always shuts down the real driver and works with a virtual one, with exeption of RemoteFX.

It's OK if this is possible with other thing, not RDP.

Thank you!

Solution

I've searched for this very same thing (remote unix application integration with windows desktop) and the short answer is "well, sort of."

If you're on-LAN with the server, you can use plain X forwarding XDMCP-style or just specify the DISPLAY to be on your desktop X server directly and launch apps on a client-side X11 server like Xming. The latter is what I find myself doing most often.

As far as I can tell, there is no seamless application integration framework that uses VNC. VNC's RFB protocol is very efficient at transferring display data, but it doesn't do much of anything else; no copy/paste buffer synchronization, no file transfer, no audio, and no window management integration.

If you have high latency between the source and destination, NX is kind of a caching and compression method on top of X11 which can eliminate a lot of the perceived latency and reduce bandwidth significantly. NX does support a seamless mode in its workstation and higher products, which they call "Floating Window Mode," but that is not available in the free versions of NX to my knowledge.

Comments

[gnur]

What exactly is your issue with x forwarding, I use it a lot and it works pretty well, even over a openvpn tunnel..

[jmp242]

Use X2Go for a free sort of NX tool. It can open individual windows like normal X Forwarding, but I believe you still have the connection GUI open somewhere.

[Alberto]

Andrew, I checked NX and you were right, no free option lets you use seamless mode. I was using Xming already while don't having something better. Thank you anyway! @jmp242 I have looked at that and sounds like the thing I'm searching for. Maybe is the solution for me, and for Andrew if he is still searching for this. I'll try it as soon I can.

[bmullan]

x2go works great is easy to install the server-side and clients. There are native clients for windows, mac and linux and also a python client that can be used on those systems. x2go also has a "remoteapp" type capability where you can define single apps on the linux x2goserver which will appear in their own window on the client side whether that client is win, mac or linux. wiki.x2go.org/doku.php is the main wiki but here is where they document setting up the "remoteapp" type capabilty to publish a linux app wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/wiki:advanced:published-applications