Linux @lemmy.ml elucubra @sopuli.xyz 1 wk. ago

Rustdesk alternative?

I've been using rustdesk for while, and it works very well for me. The news of it being somewhat opaque, and developed from China, makes me a bit nervous.

Is there a FOSS equivalent that won't make me jump through hoops, and be easily installed by someone else remotely?

I would like to be able to have it run at startup in Linux and windows, have a fairly complete feature set, like file transfer, copy paste, etc.

Also it'd be great if it could be easily installed by someone else remotely. I do SMB support, usually onsite, which is why it's not cost effective to pay for a Teamviewer or Anydesk license.

I'm taking a look through flathub, but recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

33 comments

If you're comfortable with Rustdesk but wary of the developer, you could try HopToDesk, which is a fork of Rustdesk but the company is based in the US.
- Based in the US makes it good?
  
  https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/2778
  
  Beware of hoptodesk, it's even more sketchy.
  
  If you're in the US, maybe?
  
  I only suggested it as Rustdesk not so long ago had no self-hosted FOSS server, whereas HopToDesk did - it's been a while since I've reviewed FOSS remote desktops so I probably should again.
  
  No, but a "company" in China has far less autonomy from the government in China than one in the US. For some people, that can be stressful
- Thanks. I'm trying out HopToDesk. As I understand it's a clone. Works pretty well. I hope they don't pull any shenanigans
Rustdesk is FOSS, no? You could certainly run an instance yourself to be more comfortable with where the data is going.
- The installer has included a root certificate before that gets installed without asking. Also there are some code blobs in the code iirc.
  
  Also how they handled the initial wayland "support".
  
  It is relatively easy to smuggle in backdoors if you are the maintainer of the code and afaik there was not even an independent audit.
  
  Saying it is fine just because of it being OS is really naive.
  
  Code blobs? Can you show where?
Before RustDesk I have used NoMachine but that's completely proprietary (Luxembourg company, except for the old core protocol - NX 1).
Afair I am afraid that there isn't an all-in-one foss desktop remote software as good as RustDesk currently.
- X2go is the successor to NX and works well IMO, though I've never tried Rustdesk to compare.
You can self-host your own relay, what is there to worry about?
- You are not running the software cause you do not trust the ppl running it? So you do host the software anyway? Just because it is OS and just because you can run it on your own hardware does not mean you can blindly trust it.
  
  You can literally monitor where the data is being transmitted. There is no need to trust anyone. If it was sending data to anything that isn’t your relay server, you’d be able to easily prove it.
- This thread has a lot of reasons against rustdesk and also discusses some alternatives: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/21632052
  
  Bad coding practices is not malware, that just means the devs are not experts. Also, these were fixed when pointed out by the users, which is the whole point of being open source. The only reasonable issue is the direct modification of the GDM config, which required the user to click a button.
- As I mentioned, I use remotes occasionally, so I'm trying a low fuss solution. If my bread and butter were remote support, I'd probably invest time in a more customized set-up
- China wants so see all our clients browser history in order for their secret AI to produce exactly what we want to buy next as cheap and fast as possible. World domination secured.
Xpra.
- X11 was only?
  
  Yeah X11 only
  
  For Wayland, there is waypipe. It's not quite the same though as it doesn't run the compositor.

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