Current prerelease is 1.2.5
1.2.4 is the first to introduce experimental Wayland support. Especially on KDE Plasma there are supposed to be some issues.
Lets test!
Why?
Regular RDP/VNC programs are hard to use in real scenarios, as they rely on IP addresses. RustDesk is easier as it uses a Rendezvouz server that can also be selfhostet or reimplemented.
RustDesk is really good but I can’t get certain decisions / limitations they have. For absolutely no reason, this, only seems to work under Windows… or are they trying to push people into the Pro Server / build your own which will ultimately require you to buy a license for their software (okay reasonable) AND developer accounts so you can sign macOS binaries (not okay).
They also document scripts to bootstrap clients on other OSses. And I don’t think you need Pro to build rustdesk yourself - they even document the process.
To be fair, the APGL requires to publish code that is compilable. So giving instructions is pretty relevant for more complex projects.
The one big thing they do hide behind Pro though, is authentication for the server side. With the free version, if your server is open to the internet, then anyone who knows the IP can use it to relay their clients as well.
The point is that under Windows you can change the App name to set credentials and other settings like this:
rustdesk-host=mydomain.tld,key=eiu5pzFYlr5nY9i9yJp9smzzLnvx4XNX7O3SaNhkWS8=.exe
But under macOS you can’t do it… just because they don’t want to.
The apps are bundled completely differently on OSX and Linux. It’s technically not possible to do the same thing there. Also this is not a free/paid limitation at all.
They could maybe build a packaging tool that can customize the binaries (adding data to the PE executable in Windows and maybe a property file in OSX and Linux); but that’s quite some effort for not much gain.
I hope to God that RustDesk doesn’t get corrupted or enshitified because I absolutely love it.
Been using it for remote assistance at my workplace for about a year now and it’s been almost flawless. By far the most responsive and easy to use remote access solution I’ve used, (and I’ve used a lot.)
I use it with my family across the country to do remote support for their family computer too. It is small, lightweight, fast, handles multiple screens like a charm, and I don’t think I’ve ever had connection issues, even when on really slow network connections.
Are you affiliated with the project in any official way?
If so, thank you for such a nice product.
Not recommending against RustDesk - it is a very cool project - but regarding the “Why?”, you could use a VPN or something like Tailscale which has MagicDNS that’ll resolve hostnames of computers to their local IP address. You can use this with GNOME’s RDP server to remote in from another device pretty easily.
Only the Tailscale pairing server is proprietary but there’s a FOSS self-hostable alternative called Headscale.
The Tailscale clients are FOSS.
There isn’t much of a guide, you install the Tailscale clients and make an account on their website. After you enroll your devices to the account with a code they’ll be able to access each other via private IPs on an encrypted network based on WireGuard.
You can connect among devices with unsecured protocols like VNC because they’ll be inside the encrypted network. And this works with any app and any protocol not just remote desktop — you can use Syncthing, access files, access any services you want securely etc.
I’ve been using it on Wayland for months. But now that I think about it my key presses never reached the other side. Mouse works fine though.
Looking forward to the update!
