4. Using RDesktop - COMPLETE

rDesktop is a thin client for viewing other computers / applications that utilises RDP. Just so that you understand, RDP is a protocol for tranferring information across a network. VNC uses the RFB protocol. The VNC route basically splits the screen up into boxes and then transmits video changes as they occur. RDP on the other hand is a bit more integrated and will redraw things according to actions from the user. Apparently RDP is meant to be better but we will soon see!

If you haven't already done so, click the Rdesktop icon on the screen and type in the IP or the name of the computer on the network. If this doesn't work, then you will have to check to see if you have the correct premissions at the server. Refer to your server documentation for this (in fact, stop with DSL until you have managed to get 2 x PCs talking to each other within Windoes with no problems). Again, I haven't had any problems in this area.

If you are using rDesktop - three things will occur to you...
1. Annoyingly "dsl" is entered as the user name & there is no option to automate
2. If you have used the fullscreen mode, there is no apparent way out (CTRL+ALT+Return sorts it but be aware that the box that it converts to is right on the periphery of the screen so it doens't look as if it has worked!).
3. The colour depth is rubbish.

To deal with these issues...Rather than using the icon on the desktop (X), open up a terminal screen. At the prompt type the following:
Things in brackets need to be replaced completely with the description in the brackets and the brackets themselves.

rdesktop -u [username] -p [password] -d [domain] -a [8 or 16 according to your system] -f [targetname]

Explaination
Apart from the obvious ones -a sets the colour depth of the connection which is set at 8 or 16 bit and -f is the switch for fullscreen mode.

For more about the other options you can use you can type just rdesktop at the prompt and the list of switches is shown.

Example
rdesktop -u dogeatdog -p crumpet -d nicefriedeggs.local -a 16 -f flowerxppc

You can't specify all of this using the rdesktop GUI interface which isn't very surprising. The problems should now have dissappeared to some extent and it should look a whole lot better. I think it does look better but it is a fair bit away from the RDP client supplied with Windows (which was recently updated).

Now I am going to setup and run VNC to compare them both...