[Thinlinc-announce] The future of RDP in ThinLinc

[Pierre Ossman]

Hi guys,

We have some exciting changes going on at Cendio that we'd like to share 
with you. ThinLinc has had a long history and we've seen various shifts 
in our user base over that time. The last few years things have settled 
down and we now see a stable pattern of ThinLinc being used for Linux 
desktops and applications.

Moving forward, we will focus even more on this and to deliver the best 
possible Linux remote desktop server that we can. However, in order to 
do this we need to start shedding some parts of ThinLinc that do not fit 
with this goal. The biggest such part is the Windows integration, i.e. 
the bundled rdesktop that is currently included with ThinLinc. The 
recently released ThinLinc 4.9.0 will be the last version to include 
Windows integration.

We understand that some of you might be sad to see this part go. But we 
strongly believe that we can give you guys so much more with a more 
focused product.

So what does this mean for those of you currently using the Windows 
integration?

Short term, not much. ThinLinc 4.9.0 was just released and it will 
continue to work fine and be supported by us until its end of life in 
three years. The next time you upgrade you will need to use a different 
RDP client though. Fortunately almost every distribution includes either 
rdesktop or FreeRDP (many even have both). So in most cases it will be a 
simple matter of installing one of these, and tweaking any shortcuts or 
other launchers you have that currently use ThinLinc's tools.

So to be completely clear, connecting to a RDP server from a ThinLinc 
session will continue to work just fine. The difference being that the 
required parts will have to be downloaded and installed separately.

Several options are also available to provide commercial support for an 
RDP client beyond ThinLinc 4.9.0:

  - If you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux then support is included 
with your operating system support.

  - credativ[1] in Germany can offer support for both rdesktop and 
FreeRDP on a global basis, as well as any other Open Source software on 
your system.

  - Mutex[2] in New Zealand can also offer support for rdesktop and 
FreeRDP on a global basis.

  - Your local Linux partner might offer support services for these 
applications.

Finally support can usually be found from the communities around 
rdesktop and FreeRDP, as well as the communities for your distribution 
of choice.

If you have any questions or comments regarding these changes or 
anything else, then please get in touch with us. We hope you are as 
excited as we are about this and what this will allow us to deliver 
going forward.

[1] https://www.credativ.com/
[2] https://mutex.nz/

Regards
-- 
Pierre Ossman           ThinLinc Product Owner
Cendio AB               https://cendio.com
Teknikringen 8          https://twitter.com/ThinLinc
583 30 Linköping        https://facebook.com/ThinLinc
Phone: +46-13-214600    https://plus.google.com/+CendioThinLinc

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