A Modern Linux Graphical TERMINAL SERVER | Complete Guide for Remote Access | Any Device, Many Users

I've made many videos on Thin Clients before, all of them relying on Proxmox and the SPICE protocol. This works well when you control both the client and the hypervisor, and allows a lot of flexibility in the guest OS at the expense of flexibility at the client. If you want to rely on a remote access / Bring-Your-Own-Device type solution, you probably care more about solid multi-platform client support than flexibility in mixing VM OSes and running with no software installation on the VM. To this end, I've setup a modern Linux terminal server, which can be used to allow many clients to simultaneously connect to their own Linux desktops remotely, from nearly any device OS in common use today.

This relies on the open-source xrdp server and Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol. I chose RDP over a VNC-based solution as the protocol is extremely well standardized and has very wide client support, including clients available for the usual Windows/macOS/Linux, but also iOS, iPadOS, Android, Android TV, and even Samsung's Tizen OS for smart TVs. It's also extremely easy to get a basic setup working. Performance in terms of number of users on a single system is good, since we aren't relying on virtualization at all, and all users are able to efficiently share system resources.

This setup is good if you want to:
* Centralize computing / storage in a bring-your-own device fashion
* Get full desktop functionality out of an otherwise limited operating system (i.e. Android, iOS, Smart TVs)
* Connect back to your Linux desktop while away from home, which also keeps sensitive data off your mobile devices while traveling in case they are lost / stolen / forced to be unlocked by customs and border patrol
* Less system overhead and resource utilization than VMs
* Hardware GPU acceleration is available to all users from a single GPU for transcoding (but not OpenGL AFAIK)

It's not a great solution if you want:
* Windows (Microsoft offers this for $$$)
* Complete multi-user and entire filesystem isolation for each session
* Ephemeral clones of the entire system (VM), cleared after each user

For the commands to set this up, visit my blog post on the topic:
https://www.apalrd.net/posts/2022/xrd...

My Discord server:
Discord: discord

If you find my content useful and would like to support me, feel free to here: https://ko-fi.com/apalrd

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:26 - What is a Terminal Server?
01:47 - Installing the Operating System
03:13 - Setup the Operating System
04:35 - How It Works
06:29 - Remote Access Experience
08:06 - Basic User Management
11:14 - Clipboard
12:37 - Web Video
13:04 - Touchscreen (iPad)
13:33 - Touchscreen (Surface)
14:04 - Security
15:22 - Session Management
16:26 - User Access By Group
18:24 - Session Allocation / Termination
20:23 - Resource Limiting
24:07 - Color Profile Error
25:18 - Conclusions

#VDI
#Linux
#TerminalServer
#ThinClient
#RemoteDesktop