Remote Desktop to WinXP from Ubuntu..world of possiblities

This may sound vague. Why would you want to remote access your winXP box from Linux. Hmmm, think again.

Scenario 1: You have linux at work and winXP at home and you want to access some of the files.
Scenario 2: You have XP at work and linux at home and you wish to work from home
Scenario 3: Just for fun ;)

First glance and you would just reject the possibility of ever being able to do so. C'mon different OS's. WinxP's closed APIs. etc. Think again. Let me show you the wonders of technology and ofcourse linux.



1. Make sure you have activated remote desktop in your WinXP box.
2. Install grDesktop
#apt-get install grdesktop

3.Run Gnome Remote Desktop


4. The interface is very similar to windows remote desktop client. Enter the system ip, login username etc.


5. Congrats! You are in. You are in full control now ;)


6. A follow up on the wireless ad-hoc tutorial I posted few months back.
You can connect and disconnect your internet connection on the gateway win XP pc from wherever you are in your home. Another cool thing is shutting down the gateway pc after you are done surfing. Though the remote desktop doesn't give you explicit shutdown shortcut, we can still shutdown from the cmd. Simply go to Start > Programs > accessories > command prompt and type
shutdown -s


This opens to a world of possibilities. Though the speed of your experience depends on the underlying network and the rfc WinXP API, you can still browse the net, read docs, run presentations easily. I tried playing Counter Strike but the results weren't encouraging. Anyways, it opens you to a world of new possibilities to explore and play around.

Hope you enjoyed the article..and Kudos to open source ;)