Running a Windows Terminal Session in Linux

Here's something different from my usual pointers to free web applications and free and/or Open Source applications for Windows or Mac OS X. I spend much of my day bouncing between Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 R2, Linux, and Mac OS X. Working remotely with Linux or Mac OS X is a piece of cake using SSH. But, what about Windows? Its GUI-centricity usually requires a full graphical desktop accessed remotely using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client. It comes pre-installed on Windows. And, Microsoft provides a free version for Mac OS X. So, that leaves Linux the odd-man out. But, not really... I use the Open Source rdesktop (A Remote Desktop Protocol Client) to provide a remote graphical desktop connection to a Windows desktop or server.

The command line usually looks something like...

rdesktop -g 80% -u myusername -p - servername.domain:1024

...where -g 80% directs rdesktop to use 80% of the available desktop space, -p - queries me for the Windows account password, and :1024 appended to the hostname gives it the TCP port to use (1024 is the default but you can use a registry key change to change the port).

rdesktop makes managing Windows boxes from a Linux system much more pleasant by eliminating a lot of running around.