xrdp is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

implementation of

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

that enables

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...

other than

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

(such as

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

-style operating systems) to provide a fully functional RDP-compatible

remote desktop In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...

experience. It works by bridging graphics from the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

to the client and relaying controls from the client back to X Window Server. According to the developers, the protocol works with

rdesktop rdesktop is an implementation of a client software for Microsoft's proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Rdesktop is free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL-3.0-or-later), and is avai ...

, FreeRDP and Microsoft's own Remote Desktop Client.

Modes of operation

In order to relay the graphics and controls between the X Window System and the user, XRDP can utilize several forwarding modes: * Xvnc: This mode works by using a

VNC Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse input from one computer to another, relaying the g ...

server installation. * xorgxrdp / X11rdp: In this mode, XRDP can communicate directly with the X server in order to bridge the graphics.

History

The project was started in mid-2004 by Jay Sorg based on the work of

and

FreeRDP Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose, while ...

that had previously explored implementations of the

proprietary {{Short pages monitor