Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi,

Our organisation is in the final stages of planning an upgrade to Server 2012 from 2003. We would like to buy 100 Rasberry Pis for staff to remote desktop to Server 2012. Is it possible to remote desktop from a Rasbery Pi to Server 2012? And if so, can it be done just from the standard Rasberry Pi OS?

Thanks,

The classic answer would be buy one and try it.

If it works buy the rest

Yes, there is a free opensoruce program called rdesktop that supports Windows/Microsoft RDP connections. It is very minimalist. If you would like a graphical frontend, there is another program called Remmina which also has support for MS RDP.

http://www.rdesktop.org/ - rdesktop
http://remmina.sourceforge.net/ - remmina

freerdp, gnome-rdp, grdesktop, rdesktop, and remmina are all in the Raspbian repository. Remmina is modular, so you'd want remmina-plugin-rdp (which has remmina as a dependency).

I think "try it" is a good answer. Although, I'd experiment first with a PC you already have (perhaps using VirtualBox or VMware Player) to determine which of the open-source clients are (or can be made) compatible with your servers. If you like what you see, order a few Raspberry Pis for beta testing.

Thanks - was planning on trying it, Rasberry Pi came yesterday, just wanted to see if anybody else had implemented it, and how they had gone about it. I've read up on a few people doing this with Server 2008 with success, so fingers crossed. Seems like rdesktop is the best option. I'll check out Remmina as that sounds interesting

I'll post the results. First problem once I get it working will be sourcing 100 of them!

MattDunn wrote:Thanks - was planning on trying it, Rasberry Pi came yesterday, just wanted to see if anybody else had implemented it, and how they had gone about it. I've read up on a few people doing this with Server 2008 with success, so fingers crossed. Seems like rdesktop is the best option. I'll check out Remmina as that sounds interesting

I'll post the results. First problem once I get it working will be sourcing 100 of them!

I will say that I have successfully connected to various Windows XP/2003, Windows 2000 Enterprise, and Windows 7 boxes and they have all worked fine. And of course I expect Server 2008 and 2012 to work as well, given that RDP specs have only changed very slightly.

Best of luck!

Well, I dont know if this is me but it does not work well for me tbh. Yes it can connect, yes you can run software and move windows just about fine but the minute you open IE or Firefox and try to browse any website it just slows down. I dont know if this is "normal" but in my environment it is not acceptable for users to slow down like this. I have even successfully managed to overclock Pi to 1Ghz but no change whatsoever for me, so it looks I will have to abandon project of PI being ThinClient for RDP.

krogoth wrote:Well, I dont know if this is me but it does not work well for me tbh. Yes it can connect, yes you can run software and move windows just about fine but the minute you open IE or Firefox and try to browse any website it just slows down. I dont know if this is "normal" but in my environment it is not acceptable for users to slow down like this. I have even successfully managed to overclock Pi to 1Ghz but no change whatsoever for me, so it looks I will have to abandon project of PI being ThinClient for RDP.

Well, for me RPi RDP speed is good enough for productivity. Web browsing can be improved by disabling Smooth Scrolling in the Firefox Options. Video and RemoteFX is unusable now, but productivity use data input, word, excel, web based apps is definitely not a problem. Comparing RPi to thin client that have the same range of price like Chinese one, RPi is definitely faster and much better. I don't know about high end thin client like HP, but my personal opinion is good enough.

I already deployed some of PIs, no problem at all, except no sound and no USB (I don't know how to set it up )

MattDunn wrote:Thanks - was planning on trying it, Rasberry Pi came yesterday, just wanted to see if anybody else had implemented it, and how they had gone about it. I've read up on a few people doing this with Server 2008 with success, so fingers crossed. Seems like rdesktop is the best option. I'll check out Remmina as that sounds interesting

I'll post the results. First problem once I get it working will be sourcing 100 of them!

How is this working for you?

I have successfully been running 8 raspberry pi using rpitc download.

Only had on client crash in the 9 months but it is running again now.

Some have said there are problems using Sd cards but I have seen it work ok.

Remmina of late I have been having problems with.

Setting up raspberry pi with hdmi to vga is a great little thin client.

Paul

Free software thin client for Pi 2: http://winterminal.com