I finally took the full plunge and installed Ubuntu Linux 10.04 on my work laptop that was running Windows XP. Everything I needed immediately worked fine (serial connection to routers if needed, ssh, telnet) . I also spend a lot of my day working in servers running Microsoft Windows 2003/2008 so having a good terminal services client is extremely important.
I’ve been using the Remmina RDP client for some time now and I like it.
Features: tabbed windows, ability to jump in and out of full screen, ability to save connection settings, stable connections to 2003/2008 environments, ability to bring sound over and map my home folder.
I have seen two gotchas.
1. When trying to RDP into and RDP session, for example when connecting to a server that you don’t have publically accessible, the caps lock key does not work for passwords. You must use the shift key in order to correctly key in a password.
2. When working on the vSphere client, when you have a lot of items in the left pane (vm guests, hosts, datastores), when the screen refreshes is seems to refresh twice as long as it would be when using the native RDP client.
If you haven’t tried it yet for connecting to an XP/Vista/7 workstation in your home or connecting to your lab or work environment, I would highly recommend it.
