KDE Plasma 6.8 will deliver major upgrades to remote desktop support on Wayland. Developers are working on better unattended access, lower latency, improved client compatibility, and more advanced remote input.
One of the most useful changes is a new unattended mode. Unlike regular support sessions, where the remote user sees the same desktop as someone at the host computer, unattended access is for times when no one is using the remote machine.
With this update, remote connections start at the login screen. After logging in, the host’s physical displays are disconnected from the session. This adds privacy, so anyone near the remote PC can’t see the user’s activity during remote control.
Moreover, Plasma will now adjust the remote desktop to fit the client’s display, instead of just copying the host’s monitor setup. The remote screens can be resized to match the client’s screen size and layout.
KDE has also improved what happens after a remote session. When you log back in locally, your windows should go back to their original spots on your usual monitor setup, instead of staying rearranged from the remote session.
Clipboard features are getting better too. KDE’s remote desktop now lets you copy text both ways between local and remote machines. They’re also working on file transfers through the clipboard, with support coming to KRDC.
Regarding performance, KDE developers are working to lower latency across the whole remote desktop process, from capturing and encoding frames on the host to sending them over the network and displaying them on the client. More performance upgrades are coming to KRDC in KDE Gear 26.12.
KDE is also improving compatibility with existing RDP clients. The RDP server now supports RemoteFX Progressive encoding and hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding, with better fallback if H.264 fails. NLA authentication for Windows clients has been fixed too.
However, one feature that probably won’t make it into Plasma 6.8 is multi-user headless remote access, where several users can log into separate sessions on the same machine. The devs say this is complex to implement, and with the feature freeze coming up, it likely won’t be ready for this release.
You can find more details in David Edmundson’s announcement.
