Remote Desktop & Access Tools comparison between 4 great open source, self hosted options!

Today I wanted to give a comparison of the features and capabilities of four incredible, open source, self hosted Remote Access and Remote Desktop tools. RustDesk, RPort, Remotely, and MeshCentral are terrific, powerful tools that will work for your business built on open source, or just for supporting your own, family, and friend's machines.

=== Links ===
Show Notes

RustDesk Homepage

RustDesk Videos

Remotely Github

Remotely Videos

MeshCentral HomePage

MeshCentral Videos

RPort Homepage

RPort Videos

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=== Timestamps ===
00:00 Beginning
00:09 Introduction to Comparison
01:20 Thank you to my Parons at Patreon, and my subscribers at YouTube
02:00 The Comparison Chart Overview
06:53 MeshCentral Overview
09:42 RPort Overview
14:17 Remotely Overview
21:50 RustDesk Overview

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=== Attributions ===

[mrfoodarama]

I appreciate the longer format videos and all the detail you get into. Your videos are a wealth of information

[Tandy]

Dude, you rock! Just getting deeper into Linux VMs and containers. Not only are you always on point, I was JUST trying to find a best remote access for me yesterday so your timing is spot on!

[yiltang]

Thanks for putting this comparison together. I'm a big fan of Meshcentral, the developer continually adds new features, my favorite is web relay, it allows you to access local devices and services (ie - camera, printer, etc) through a local agent connected device. Also support is great, developer and community responds quickly...

[hiddenpcmaster]

Brian, I'm always learning. Your a great teacher! Thank you.

[louislectric]

Having watched a few of your videos, your vocal and visual presentation is remarkably good. Keep up the good work. You're the reason I tried my hand at Rustdesk as an alternative to Teamviewer. It worked straight away. Perhaps I'm ready for Remotely. No buts and ifs when I reaffirm OSS is awesome.

[Steven_nevetS]

This is a very very good video! Loved the comparisons

[kbit]

FINALLLYYY I love this. thank you soo much.

[Glatze]

Hi Brian, thanks for this! That´s very interesting and insightful!

[tiruliru]

Your comparison is very helpfull ! In corporate environments and their networks there are many restrictions. My corporate environment allows using only TCP ports 80 or 443. So, it would be helpfull to add to your table also the column about the ports that can be used.

[shytv]

Many thanks for the video. I was expecting to see Guacamole on that list.

[blindside]

Excellent video as always. Just wanted to say personally don’t mind the long format. In-fact I think it is just kind of a staple of your content and videos. While I understand this is hard for some do to attention spans and the short videos ruling the world it seems. The longer form is appreciated.

[TeeDub]

1st time on your channel... awesome breakdown!! Wuz just looking for this info on RUST or alternate to connect between my Mac & Windows machines!! Thanks, ..."Liked & Subbed"!!👊🔥

[taylorbornyk]

This is great! I’d note that you can disconnect the remote session as the end user with admin configuration.

[hotstovejer]

I have 3 out of the 4 set up in house. I abandoned Remotely when the project was left, but I'm glad to see it's been picked back up, so I know what I'm doing later. Some quick thoughts.
Rustdesk is great as an anydesk alternative. Being able to set up unattended access is nice, especially for the non technical people in your life.
Rport is like the sysadmin DevOps remote control software. I could easily see being able to use it as an Ansible alternative with the scripts and libraries. Not a bomgar replacement.
Meshcentral I've used a little, but I need to tie it into my LDAP server. Seems like the most polished product, but it "looks" old.

Been trying to get rustdesk web working, but to no avail lol.

[kevinhughes]

Excellent breakdown thank you. I have RustDesk running but might checkout some of these now

[XSpImmaLion]

Been using RustDesk, not sure if the others would fit what I use it for, but perhaps it's an interesting thing to point out - you can remote to an Android phone with it.
My use is the most basic one - extra tool to support family and friends on mostly Windows desktops and laptops, and Android phones.
I used TeamViewer for this previously... well, in fact I still use it sometimes, but my intention is to migrate completely.
Overall, RustDesk extreme simplicity is both a blessing and a curse I guess... it's great because it's pretty simple for anyone to start using, a great replacement for TeamViewer. But you don't have several of the advanced features you have on other options.... it's more for simple support rather than managing a bunch of servers and whatnot.
Great comparison though!

[scottc]

Great information and perfect timing. I’ve been looking for a comparison of the different products for awhile.

One question that comes into play regarding the ones that have agents installed on the systems. Do the system agents automatically update when new revision’s/patches come out for the specific products? Or do they require manually being updated on each system individually? I was searching through the chart and didn’t notice anything pertaining to the subject.

[JzJad]

FYI the windows session in remotely is for incase you connect to a terminal server with multiple user sessions, you can swap user sessions

[silsed]

Great video, thanks. I appreciated the worksheet, it must have taken a lot of time to do it!!
btw do you know some alternative of x2go? in other words, remote control of Virtual screen in Order that multiple users May rdc on their screens in the same server.

[prway]

From my point of view Meshcentral is the best. The rest of remote desktop software allow you to manage already running pc but what happens when Windows won't boot up properly? With Meshcentral you can start up pc (boot to BIOS / change boot order) and with WDS(and PXE) remotly reinstall os. If you have VPN tunnels (site-to-site) within all remote location you can easily re-deploy whole computer even which resides in diffrent country.