Remotely Connect to Windows within Linux

Table of Contents

When wanting to connect to Windows, there is Remote Desktop Client for Windows and Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac. However, what about for Linux? In this tutorial I’ll be using FreeRDP, a command line tool, to do so!

Installation #

Install the correct package based on you display server. You can find out using this command:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

If you’re using Ubuntu/Debian, you can install it using apt.

If you’re on X11 use:
```
sudo apt install freedrp2-x11
```
If you’re on Wayland use:
```
sudo apt install freedrp2-wayland
```

Connecting to Windows #

Once it’s installed, we can connect to it like this:

xfreerdp /u:<user_name> /p:<password> /v:<public_ip_of_windows_vm> /f

The /f command is for fullscreen.

However, if you’re logging into a domain. Use the following

xfreerdp /u:<domain>\\<user_name> /p:<password> /v:<public_ip_of_windows_vm> /f

If you get a prompt saying Certificate Name Mismatch as below. Simply type Y to trust the certificate.

To get a list of other options following the docs here