I’ve been using MeshCentral lately, it does the job but the UI leaves something to be desired.
Itsfoss is blogspam and often have many mistakes and wrong info. People should really stop posting links from them.
Itsfoss is indeed written by ChatGPT I think
Free Software*
I have setup a rustdesk server with docker, it was surprisingly easy to get started. It was for a friend who is managing the IT services of a small factory, the completely switched from TeamViewer and they are satisfied. More importantly their users, who are worse than your average windows user, found the transition relatively painless.
Wasn’t there some controversy about this that it wasn’t entirely open-source?
they have a pro server with more features that’s closed source and paid
But why do you need a server for such a program? Can’t it be P2P or with the server stuff running on the client machine?
The server is used for hole punching, to open up a P2P connection thorugh NATs and Firewalls. If it doesn’t work the server also relays the traffic between the clients.
Getting an end to end connection through todays internet is unfortunately not easy for an average user.
Theoretically, without the server, every time you want to connect to a peer you would have to figure out what’s their public IP address is, which can change. The server acts as a middleman between the peers so you dont have to do this manually, all peers only need to know the server’s IP address to connect to each other. The server is really only used for this initial linking up of peers, afterwards the connection is P2P (if possible, they fall back to a relay server if P2P fails).
Yeah it’s pretty awesome. My only gripe with it is the fact that it is super annoying when you want to send a client with your self-hosted urls to a customer.
You can either awkardly add it to the filename or you need to fork the client and build it yourself. Kind of sucks that the easier custom client function is stuck behind their subscription.
authentication is also stuck behind their subscription. for random customers to be able to use your servers, you also have to let everyone else on the internet use it.
I always neglected it because of its name. I thought it’s something for rust…
I guess it’s just written in Rust.
Does this work on a headless box?
yes
I used this recently to help a friend with some tech stuff. The docker images were simple to bring up and within minutes we were connected. It freaked him out how easily I could get on and control his PC. I was impressed by the whole experience.
Rustdesk looks good on the outside, but if you look inside, it has a really bad codebase and has done some sketchy stuff in the past.
Last year, it installed custom root certificates as trusted on windows, which is a huge security risk: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/6444
On linux systems, it forced its own autostart with no option to disable this behavior: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/issues/4863
In the past, when it didn’t have Wayland support yet, it edited your GDM config and just disabled wayland: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/1.1.9/src/platform/linux.rs#L411-L422
Furthermore, the code quality is really bad. 90% of the linux platform-dependant code is just executing shell commands and parsing their output, while the same could be achieved in a safe way with proper rust builtins: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/master/src/platform/linux.rs
While I agree that Rustdesk works pretty flawlessly, the codebase and the behavior of the developers made me distrust the software and I don’t recommend using it.
To add on:
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There is no transparency about who is behind it. It just a Github account called “Rustdesk.” It could be a real company in Singapore or it could be some guy in China as people have speculated.
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The Rustdesk software needs way more permissions than necessary. This became evident with the flatpak as they did sandbox escapes which prevented them from being on flathub
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The Rustdesk distribution is entirely centralize release server run by Rustdesk. They could easily push out malware to lots of devices.
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They have done some sketchy things in the past. One of the things they did was quietly switch Linux desktops back to X11.
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The Rustdesk system is not terribly resistant to brute forcing. The weak password means they someone could try every combination.
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Rustdesk docker deployment docker compose exposes all ports on the host. This is minor but it could lead to a sandbox excape.
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Rustdesk servers keep getting hosted in countries that have freedom problems such as China and Russia.
Wow, I’m wondering how anyone would trust this software. It literally exposes your desktop. To me that requires top-tier trust level, i.e. nothing sketchy at all.
We need an alternative
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Wow that’s so sketchy.
@petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de you might want to add that warning to the post.
They also tried to submit the app to Flathub, but had way too broad permissions with no explanation why. “Users expect filesystem access” etc. In the end it was rejected and they publish a .flatpak file themselves.
https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/5233
The other points are far worse though.
Rustdesk controversy
The whole discussion on that pull request is extremely sketchy, IMO.
Okayyyy… thats not great. I just read one of the threads and thats scary.
The person(s?) maintaining this seems to be VERY BAD at communicating. They did fix the auto start problem but did not at all discuss this from what I see. Thats not great.
I self-host my own rustdesk server and it’s awesome. It just works flawlessly.
I tried it and it’s works exactly like Anydesk, except it’s 5 times slower than Anydesk at least that’s on their server, I know I can host it myself but I don’t think I have the skill to set it up
It works very well and there is no speed difference at all. Of course you wont ever get anything worth in life without either putting in the work or paying either with money or your privacy.
DO NOT USE THIS
This is a massive security risk and they have had so much controversy. They also routinely delete Github issues and discussions that question them. To top it off they are likely Chinese run.
Source:
Just lookup “Rustdesk controversy”
it took you as long to find that link as it would have to look up the thing they gave you. this is not kindergarten, nobody owes you you their time. you are expected to be able to find and evaluate the validity of information yourself.
nope I had it bookmarked
This. No matter how many downvotes you get for it. This all the way.
Is there a good, free, cross platform alternative?
Tail scale and sunshine/moonlight would work
Maybe meshcentral?
It depends on what you are trying to do. You also could do something like Tailscale + TightVNC
depends on your definition of good, and free
This comment is helpful
HopToDesk. https://hoptodesk.com
China is good though? At least that ensures they aren’t a CIA operation.
China bans encryption and doesn’t allow you to use anything to thwart surveillance. I can’t say I want that in a remote access tool.
China bans encryption
Most confidently wrong statement I have read all year.
Wait until people find out america bans certain cryptographic things to help them out.
Not really. At this point, you’re having to pick between two surveillance states.
