Your Remote Desktop SUCKS!! Try this instead (FREE + Open Source)

About this video

NetworkChuck surveys the messy state of remote desktop — Windows RDP only accepts connections on Pro editions, Windows can’t natively remote into a Mac, Linux needs xrdp, and VNC is painful to install with shaky copy/paste and GPU performance — then lands on RustDesk as his pick: a free, open-source, TeamViewer-style tool written in Rust with clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, and phones. He shows three ways to use it: direct IP connections on a local network (enabling direct IP access on port 21118 plus a permanent password), pairing it with Twingate (the video’s sponsor, a zero-trust access tool he uses so his video editors can reach studio machines from anywhere), and self-hosting your own RustDesk server. For the self-hosted route he spins up a small cloud VM (he uses Linode, the roughly $5/month tier running Ubuntu 24.04), installs Docker, and brings up the RustDesk signaling and relay servers (hbbs and hbbr) with a single Docker Compose command copied from the docs. He then copies the server’s public key (from the id_ed25519.pub file) and the server IP into each client’s network settings so connections route through his own server instead of RustDesk’s public ones, and demonstrates both direct encrypted connections (when NAT hole-punching works) and relayed connections (when it doesn’t). He also gives honorable mentions to browser-based options Apache Guacamole and Kasm Workspaces, and rejects TeamViewer and AnyDesk mainly because self-hosting there is paid or nags you toward a license. Creator claims to attribute: he says Windows Pro costs about $200, which had been his workaround cost across all his machines.

Key takeaways

• RustDesk is the video’s recommended remote desktop tool: free, open source, cross-platform (including phones), with GPU-accelerated native clients for heavier work like video editing.
• Built-in OS tools have hard limits: the Windows RDP host must run a Pro edition, Windows has no native way to remote into a Mac, and Linux typically needs xrdp or VNC bolted on.
• On a local network you can skip servers entirely — enable direct IP access (default port 21118), set a permanent password, and connect client-to-client by IP address.
• Self-hosting the RustDesk server is a short Docker Compose job on a small cloud VM; clients then need the server IP and the public key from the id_ed25519.pub file pasted into their network settings.
• The server’s job is discovery and connection brokering: it tries to punch a direct encrypted connection between clients and only relays traffic itself when a direct path isn’t possible.

Episode details: published February 4, 2025 · 22:30 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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