I’m looking to rdp into my Kubuntu 26.04 system, but it seems the various rdp clients I found for Android do not support one or both of the required H.264/YUV420 capabilities. I’ve tried the canonical Windows App client and aFreeRdp. Is there another Android client that does support krdp, or what is the best method for remote access via an Android device?
I am using aRDP (free) here, connecting to my Kubuntu 26.04 PC, which works well. On a couple of occasions, it has not connected the first try and has given an error.
It connected just fine on the next try each time, though.
To be honest, connecting to a full desktop on a phone screen is… cumbersome and clunky at best, at least to me.
I prefer to just ssh into it using ConnectBot for most of the things I need to do.
Hmm. It failed on my first connection attempt but worked on the second. Interesting. It looks like aRDP tried with H.264 in one capability and YUV420 in another, but not both together, so krdp rejected it. Then later it tried with both H.264 and YUV240 together, and that’s when I got in. Claude’s theory is maybe the gfx renderer in aRDP takes a bit to fully initialize. Seems a bit strange, but plausible, I guess. I’ll have to run some further tests. Thanks for letting me know what worked for you so I could take a closer look at things.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m connecting from a tablet, not a phone. Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+. I agree, connecting over RDP from a phone is virtually unusable. A good tablet, OTOH, can be quite handy.
On my phone I did not change any settings, just entered my address and login info, and used whatever it has for default settings. I have no obvious YUV240 option there.
This is why I generally prefer VNC over RDP where possible: client/server pairings tend to be a lot less of a cr*pshoot.
FWIW a well-designed client can make all the difference when it comes to remoting a desktop from a touchscreen device. I use bVNC on my phone regularly and it does a good job of making the more orthogonal types of interaction (keyboard access, modifier keys + combos, right-clicking etc) as frictionless as possible. Mouse hover is about the only thing that really can’t be translated, but these days you rarely see that being used in a way that actual functionality depends on.