Hello selfhosters, I’ve been using different remote desktop apps to support few friends and family members with their Windows or Linux desktop machines. Sometimes I also use phone (Android) when I’m away from home.
I tried 3 services so far:
- TeamViewer - its amazing, but it recognized me as non-private user and asking for money…
- AnyDesk - even better experience than TeamViewer. It also started with non-private use and messages to buy a license (after creating account it stopped doing that). It works perfectly fine, but sometimes it gets super slow and it tends to reduce stream quality by too much
- RustDesk - finally found open source solution and it has the same features like others I tried. The problem with RustDesk is simmilar to AnyDesk, sometimes its super slow, laggy and with reduced stream quality and sometimes connection breaks. It has permanent message on the bottom:
Ready, For faster connection, please set up your own server.
Sounds like a perfect task for my server on fiber network.
I checked self hosted RustDesk service, but it requires opening ports. I have open wireguard port to my home server to connect to home network when needed. I don’t like idea of opening more ports just because it doesn’t feel safe in my hands, but maybe I’m wrong. Am I missing something? What do you use for remote desktop? Do you have the same experience with any service I mentioned here? Is anyone selfhosting RustDesk server? Are there better (free or affordable) alternatives available? I prefer selfhosted if possible. 10$ a month is kinda steep for me and my needs. I don’t need super high quality stream, but would be nice to have simple solution that just works
All tips are welcome
You can tunnel RDP over SSH. Then you’d only open a port that requires authentication to access and is encrypted.
Do I need to open port on client pc for that? Ill take a look anyway, thx
No only the server, you can host an openssh server and have clients connect remotely.
Sorta like how you can host a webserver and a client doesn’t need 443 open. Except a reverse shell is possible with ssh, allowing a client to be controlled without their port 22 open.
Nice thx, Ill read more about that
As far as security goes, 1 open port and 1000 open ports contain basically the same level of risk exposure to the internet- a hole will always be a hole. If you need to open a few more for rustdesk, just do it, and be diligent about your firewall rules.
I’ve used VNC inside my LAN before with decent results, and it doesn’t break graphics drivers like windows RDP does. However, not FOSS.
Thx, Ill try VNC. I might open port at the end, but there are many options in other comments Id like to try as well
I use NoMachine, but that’s in a Linux-to-Linux environment.
Did a test last weekend sitting in a department store parking lot on the store’s public wifi, wifi bitrate about 50Mbps both ways, 50ms between me and my homelab … very very usable experience with quality set at 6/10.
This. Everything else my partner and I tried with our home server was some kind of BS (except SSH obviously) except for NoMachine. Bulletproof.
Thank you. Sounds good, but linux to linux is not enough for me unfortunately. I need something that works on android and windows as well
NoMachine has Android and Windows clients.
Are you doing the support for free? If so I would make another teamviewer account.
I’ve only heard of them asking for money if you connect to a computer with a paid account. Are you connecting to computers with paid teamviewer instances?
Yeah doing it for free and never had a paid version. It could be that some computers had paid support via TeamViewer, but It wasnt me. I stopped using TeamViewer many years ago, I could give it another try. thx!
I use Apache Guacamole with Duo 2FA and LDAP authentication. All of it is self hosted and sitting behind Nginx for SSL. Works great aside from when I’m in the office and they do some security te blocking that I’m too lazy to find a work around for as I rarely go into the office.
Why the downvote for Guacamole? Is it because it’s not practical to OPs question? Did something happen with the project? I’m not up to speed, but have been mulling over using it for my setup for a while now.
I personally use hop2desk for all of my remote access needs. Works wonderfully on any pc as well as on android! Best part is you dont need to dick with ports or anything like that, just make sure you set a good persistent password and you’re good to go.
This looks super promising thank you
