Getting to Know Remote Desktop Applications on Windows and Linux
Where I work, I am often asked by users if there are problems with computers, ranging from simple things such as asking excel formulas, printers not printing, setting up song player applications, trouble with networks, and so on.
Sometimes the problems encountered turn out to be too simple without me needing to intervene at the user’s place, coincidentally some users are in different buildings, for example: printer settings on LAN windows, to solve user problems, I usually use the Remote Desktop application, provided the user’s computer is already is set to support remote.
In addition to solving user problems, remote applications can also be used as an interface for enterprise applications such as inventory, with a note added support from the server with the Terminal Service feature.
What is the Remote Desktop application? Remote Desktop is a useful application for accessing other computers via a local network or via the internet.
Here’s the remote desktop variant that I usually use..
1. Remote Desktop Connection
Remote Desktop Connection is a default application from Windows and does not need to be installed additional applications. However, to use this application, the client computer must first activate the Remote Desktop facility.
How to activate the Remote Desktop Connection facility:
Click the Start button -> right click on My Computer -> select the Remote tab -> check Allow users to connect remotely to this computer.
Click Select Remote Users to add users who can remotely access the computer.
Before trying to remotely there is one more condition that must be met, the user must activate a password to login.
How to connect Remote Desktop Connection to the client computer:
Enter the computer name or ip address click connect
then enter your username and password
tada.. we are already connected to the client computer
The advantage of using Remote Desktop Connection is that the remote can run quickly and stably on the LAN.
The weakness is, only one user is allowed to access the client computer at the same time.
2. Terminal Services
If the Remote Desktop Connection can only be one user, Terminal Services supports multiple users to access one computer at the same time. Terminal Services technology is often used by companies to connect company applications in Indonesia, apart from using the web, one of the advantages is one time application update for all users.
In addition, Terminal Services also allows administrators to remotely control users connected to Terminal Services.
To use Terminal Services, we have to pay a license to Microsoft per year plus a fee if we want to add users who can connect to Terminal Services.
3. Team Viewer
Team Viewer is a remote desktop application that can connect a user’s computer to a client computer via a LAN network or the internet.
The Team Viewer includes applications that act as servers and clients as well.
Here’s how to use the team viewer app:
Activate the team viewer application that serves as the server computer, note the ID and Password.
On the client computer, also activate the team viewer then enter the ID and Password of the computer that is the server.
After success, we will directly connect to the server computer, I tested for the Linux Ubuntu dios server, here’s how it looks:
Team Viewer is usually used to help users outside the LAN, for example outside the city, it can even be abroad as long as the team viewer is activated.
4. Remmina
Alternative applications other than remote desktop Linux can use Remmina, actually on Linux Ubuntu there is a Terminal Server Client which is also a remote desktop application, but there are 2 drawbacks, namely
1. does not support configuration for multiple servers, configuration in Terminal Server Client only applies to one computer, if you want to connect to other computers we must first change the configuration.
2. It doesn’t support local printer detection, we can’t print using local printer when we connect to server.
Here are the steps for using Remmina:
Add the configuration of the server you want to remotely
Click connect
After successful we will connect to the server.
