Remote Desktop & OpenGL

Remote Desktop and OpenGL does not play very well. When you connect to a Windows box the OpenGL Driver is unloaded and you end up with software emulation of OpenGL.

When you disconnect from the Windows box the OpenGL driver is not reloaded. This causes issues when you are running tests on the machine as you have to physically login to the machine to reset the drivers.

The solution I ended up using was to:
  • Disable Remote Desktop.
  • Delete all software added by our out-sourced Admin's for remote desktop access.
  • Install NoMachine
NoMachine is my personal faviourate (when it does not play up) for a number of reasons:
  • Hardware acceleration of compression (video of desktop).
  • Works on Windows and Linux.
  • Works well on low-bandwidth connections especially if the client and server have the necessary hardware for compression of the data stream.
  • On Linux you get your desktop as you last left it when you were sitting in front of the machine.
  • On Windows it does not affect OpenGL.
When NoMachine plays up it hogs the CPU. It is however in active development.

Others to consider:
  • TurboVNC
  • TightVNC
  • TeamWare - only free for personal use.




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