New DICE remote desktop service
For the last 5 years we have provided a remote DICE desktop service which is based on the NX technology. Although this system has some nice benefits, particularly being light on bandwidth requirements, the technology is beginning to show its age and there is a serious shortage of good client software for many platforms.
With this in mind we have made the decision to switch to providing an RDP based service. This has very good client support for all platforms (Windows, MacOSX and Linux). Currently we are at the stage of being able to offer staff users early access to a test version of the service at staff.xrdp.inf.ed.ac.uk. We’re hoping that people will try it out and report back any problems they experience. Full information on how to use the service is available on our Computing Help site.
Once we’re confident there are no major issues we intend to replace the two NX services with equivalents based on RDP. The aim being to get the new service entirely rolled out before the start of Semester 1 in September.
