I’m a Linux admin at work and I use Linux for my main system.

I do need to administer some Windows only things too. I got them to give me an older desktop system running windows that I leave running in my cube.

Anytime I need to do Windows stuff I remote into that machine.

How did that exchange go?

They try to tell you that you can’t use your last name?

Ubuntu is great. I used it for years.

This is going to sound petty, but one thing that annoyed me for years was the ads for their enterprise crap that they put into the terminal whn running updates.

I tried Debian 12 when it came out and I love it. I switched all of my systems to Debian.

I would much rather use a community driven distro than a corporate one.

Also, I applied for a job with Ubuntu The recruiter sent me the most insane take home written interview packet. I took a look at it and decided I didnt want to work with a bunch of people who would fill that packet out.

I just bought one of these..

It sounds like you got it working-ish.

One thing you might be running into is having hiberboot (AKA fast startup)enabled in windows. Instead of shutting down it hibernates when you choose “shutdown”.

If it is in the hibernated state instead of actually shutdown. You won’t be able to choose a different boot option.

Here is some info on how to turn it off. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-fast-startup-in-windows-11.1212/

Just for shiggles, I setup and ran a minecraft Java server on an old phone for a little while. I did this through Termux.

It was surprisingly good.

Most people get a new phone every 2-3 years. If people use their 2 most recent phones as simple servers, then these are not 10 year old devices.

I have some strange power issues with my laptop that may have a similar cause.

I put an additional drive in my work laptop so I could debian for work without nuking the system drive.

Shutting down usually always works properly but rebooting gets stuck sometimes. It’s like it gets to the bottom of the reboot cycle and loses the ability to say “okay boot back up now”. On my laptop, it’s obvious that it is still on because of the light on the power button. I hold it down for about 12 seconds until it goes off and then I can power it back on.

I wonder if your surface is doing a similar thing where it is still powered on but not booted. You might try hiding the power button down for about 15 seconds and then hitting it again when it’s in this state.

Lost at 3

_yes But not in any way that makes it useful. It starts when the user logs into the computer locally. If I was going to do that I wouldn’t need a remote session.

You can set the account to login automatically, but this doesn’t unlock the keychain which is needed to decrypt the user’s RDP password. So you can do it but you need to set your account to login automatically and set your keychain password to be blank.

I use the one built into Gnome but I have run into even more issues trying to install and use other ones.

Using RDP clients like Remmina is great. The problem is running a RDP server in linux.

In order to connect you must already be logged in to the remote computer locally and have unlocked your keychain. If the remote computer lost power and rebooted you will not be able to get in unless you have set the computer to login automatically and have set the keychain password to be blank, which is not great for security.

You can not use a different screen resolution in the client than you have setup in the server. This means that using “RD Client” on my Android phone to connect to my desktop computer with a resolution of 1920x1080 doesn’t work. I need to use an alternate RDP client on my phone where a I can specify a custom resolution of 1920x1080. And then the user interface is tiny and does not fill my screen.

I use Remmina and it is great as a RDP client. But that is not my issue.

The issue is the way RDP is implemented at the server level.

I can do anything I “need” to via ssh. But I would really like the convenience.

At work they monitor web traffic and block vpns, but they dont block ssh. So I use an ssh tunnel to rdp to my home system so I can easily look something up, navigate to the web interface of one of my self hosted apps, or get a torrent downloading at home.

Remote desktop working like it does in windows.

• easy to setup and use
• can remote into a system that has been recently rebooted. Without needing to make the user auto login and set the keychain password to be blank.
• resolution scales to remote client interface

I love linux and it is really all I use but RDP support is severly worse than windows.

When installing Debian, it asks you for a root password. If you enter one then you will not be added to the sudo group automatically. If you skip entering a root password, you will be added to sudo.

I always enter a root password and then once in the installed OS switch to the root account with su - then add my self to sudo with usermod -aG sudo beirdo-baggins

Then reboot.

Moved from a junky setup where I was forwarding my domain mail to gmail. And sending mail through gmail using the smtp server provided by my web host.

I was having too many issues.

I switched to fastmail. It is quite good. And you can get some free basic web hosting included with your paid service.