If you plan to use RDP rather than VMware Blast or PCoIP for connections to remote desktops, you can choose between using a Remote Desktop (rdesktop) client or FreeRDP (xfreerdp), the open-source implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), released under the Apache license.
Because the rdesktop program is no longer being actively developed, Horizon Client can also run the xfreerdp executable if your Linux machine has the required version and patches for FreeRDP.
Use a package manager, such as apt for Ubuntu or yum for RHEL, to install the latest version of xfreerdp or rdesktop on the Linux machine.
General Syntax
You can use the vmware-view command-line interface or some properties in configuration files to specify options for xfreerdp, just as you can for rdesktop.
- To specify that Horizon Client should run xfreerdp rather than rdesktop, use the appropriate command-line option or configuration key.
Command-line option: --rdpclient="xfreerdp" Configuration key: view.rdpClient="xfreerdp" - To specify options to forward to the xfreerdp program, use the appropriate command-line option or configuration key, and specify the FreeRDP options.
Command-line option: --xfreerdpOptions Configuration key: view.xfreerdpOptions
For more information about using the vmware-view command-line interface and configuration files, see Using the vmware-view Command-Line Interface and Configuration Files.
Syntax for Network Level Authentication
--enableNla
Also, you must add the /cert-ignore option so that the certificate verification process can succeed. Following is an example of the correct syntax:
vmware-view --enableNla --rdpclient=xfreerdp --xfreerdpOptions="/p:password /cert-ignore /u:user-name /d:domain-name /v:server"
If the password contains any special characters, escape the special characters (for example: \$).
Syntax Specific to Using FreeRDP with Horizon Client
Keep the following guidelines in mind:
- You must escape special characters that you might normally place in quotation marks. For example, the following command does not work because the special character $ in pa$$word is not escaped:
(incorrect)
vmware-view --rdpclient=xfreerdp --xfreerdpOptions="/p:'pa$$word' /u:'crt\administrator'"
Instead, you must use:
(correct)
vmware-view --rdpclient=xfreerdp --xfreerdpOptions="/p:'pa\$\$word' /u:'crt\administrator'"
- If end users will use a session-in-session implementation of Horizon Client, you must use the /rfx option. An example of a session-in-session implementation is one in which an end user logs in to Horizon Client on a thin client, so that the Horizon Client interface is the only one the end user sees, and the end user then launches a nested version of Horizon Client to use a remote application provided by an RDS host. In cases like this, if you do not use the /rfx option, the end user will not be able to see the remote desktop and application icons in the desktop and application selector of the nested client.
Feature Limitations for RDP Connections
Due to a known issue, rdesktop does not work on Ubuntu systems at this time.
For a full list of other known issues with RDP connections, see the Horizon Client for Linux Release Notes.