Share a Windows-10 screen via RDP and see it from Windows-10 and Linux

Problem. You want to see the screen of a remote Windows machine (let’s call it WMA) any maybe work on it without using AnyDesk, TeamViewer or the likes. The machine is in your LAN or you have a VPN to reach WMA network.

Solution. You can use RDP.

RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is the most popular desktop sharing protocol in the Microsoft environment, an alternative to the venerable VNC protocol. RDP is builtin into Microsoft products so it is expected to work quite well out of the box.

Here I show how to enable/disable RDP in a Windows-10 computer and how to connect to it from a Windows or a Linux machine.

The examples here show are run in my office LAN which is borghi.lan . In the LAN we have and Active Directory Domain Controller implemented in Samba, the Windows domain name is: WINDOM .

Enable RDP on a Windows-10 computer

I want to enable RDP in a computer called nicholas.borghi.lan . Then I log into it and:

Start -> Settings -> System -> Enable Remote Desktop (on the right side, at the bottom) . You must be administrator to enable the RDP desktop sharing.

After that you need to say which users are allowed to login via RDP, at the bottom of the screen you will see Select users that can remotely access this pc. Follow that selector and put the name of who you wish to let in. I will select WINDOM\adam1 , my main system administrator account.

Connect to via RDP to a client from a Windows-10 computer

Login into a Windows machine and at the search bar, in the bottom left corner type: Remote Desktop Connection. Click it. Of course you need to type only a bit of the application name.

In the “Computer” field type the name of the computer you want to log into, in my case it is nicholas.borghi.lan .

You will be asked a password. And if you want to connect with another use you can always click the More choices selector.

Voilà, you will see your remote computer screen.

Connect via RDP to a client from Linux client

I am going to use the software KRDC which I find extremely useful to mange RDP and VNC connections.

So open KRDC, at the top left selector choose “rdp” and type where you do want to connect to, in my case nicholas.borghi.lan.

You will need to select the properties of the connection which are all quite understandable and you can toggle at your wish.

clicking ok, after inserting the user you want to use for login and its password we have our remote windows machine at our fingertips, from Linux.

Final note

Instead of typing nicolas.borghi.lan you could type the IP number or also the Windows name of the computer. It should work in any case.