Great Open Source rDesktop Application for MAC
We here at Big Dog HQ have a couple of switchers on staff. The two fortunate ones (or smart ones, take your pick), that have made the rather pleasant jump to MAC from PC are loving every minute of it for sure. But as server infrastructure goes we are still running some MS Windows based servers and we need to be able to administer those systems remotely.
At first we tried out Microsoft’s version of Remote Desktop for MAC, but a couple of things were quickly apparent:
- The application is not really set up for someone that needs to operate concurrent sessions. So if you need to troubleshoot a cluster issue, well tough luck for the most part. You can create a rather sorry work around by creating duplicate instances of the application and launching them as separate instances, but like I said, not very slick.
- The second issue that we found before we said that there must be a better way, is the fact that when you disconnect a session, the application shuts down, so forget the fact that you can’t run concurrent sessions, cool, maybe could tough that out, but now you gotta relaunch the application just to get to the next session. Too much gotta go.
The application that we found to do the job and do it well, is CoRD Remote Desktop Client. There is no problem running concurrent sessions. In fact CoRD lets you choose if you want to work with those sessions in separate windows or keep things neat by using a single window. It is also pretty cool that when you resize the session window to your workspace the screen automatically resizes. The clipboard also syncs up with the remote session as well to provide an easy means of cutting and pasting. It is especially nice that if I go full screen with a 24 inch monitor it scales perfectly. As you can see from the image below, the interface is intelligently constructed so that you can easily choose which connection you want to use.
The side tile is collapsible so that you can tuck it out of the way after you connect or expand it to start another session if you need to. For my money (just kidding it’s free) CoRD is a fantastic choice for Remote Desktop.