I guess another vote for RustDesk. I use it to administer several personal computers that my friends have. They are old heads like me, but unlike me, their tech savvy is lacking. So if they have an issue, I can pop in and help in any way I can. I was using Remote Desktop Assistant for a while, but kept hearing about RustDesk so I gave it a go.

Depends exactly what you’re doing on that old PC.

If you just need to connect for administration and the like, VNC is decent. It’s my default.

If you want to watch videos or the like, I’d definitely suggest Sunlight and Moonlight. It’s a streaming remote desktop that’s meant for streaming gaming, and so it’s really good at video and audio.

I like RustDesk. If you’re worried about connectivity, you can even run your own relay server.

Sunshine and Moonlight.

It is made for gaming, but can be used for remote desktop. I use it when my laptop cannot handle a Blender scene and I want to use my desktop. It also works good with Headscale (or Tailscale if you use that). You can enable end to end encryption too.

If you want a direct replacement for Anydesk, check out Rustdesk. It is FOSS, but does not have good reputation.

Another vote for Rustdesk

I use it mostly for family tech support where MY PC is running Linux and THEY are on Windows though it works great in both directions

I use RustDesk because it’s good enough. It may not work for everything, but it is open source and has suited my needs.

I have it launch on boot in Mint and it works fine

I initially misread your question as “What good is remote desktop software?” and I thought, "look at this person, humble bragging that they are fit enough to occasionally walk across the room.

I guess now I need to go exercise.

Nomachine

if you can afford the hardware, getting something dedicated like a JetKVM is nice because you don’t have to wait for VNC software to boot. since it acts like a monitor and keyboard, you can even enter BIOS with it. JetKVM sells an extension board that you could hook up to your server motherboard’s power buttons to turn it on/off too.

for fully software solutions, i like using apollo on the server and moonlight on the clients. it’s built for game streaming, but it works for remote desktop too. i have apollo and moonlight installed on a bunch of my devices anyways so this saves me from installing an additional client most of the time.

Sunshine and moonlight. Or just ssh if it’s for administrative tasks.

I’ve had good experiences with Rustdesk. The client is open-source and the no-cost server components (ID and Relay servers) are self-hostable. The remote server works on X11 and Windows. I use this script to run XFCE+Rustdesk in a headless session:

export SERVERNUM=69
export SCREEN_SIZE='-screen 0 2560x1440x24'
export DISPLAY=":${SERVERNUM}"
export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11

xvfb-run --server-num="${SERVERNUM}" --server-args "${SCREEN_SIZE}" startxfce4 & disown
sleep 1
flatpak run com.rustdesk.RustDesk & disown

Sunshine + Moonlight is also a good choice. I have Sunshine installed on a box at home and use Tailscale to connect to it from the Moonlight client. At 1440p 60 FPS it has no visible compression artifacts and responsive enough for gaming.

deleted by creator

ssh

Install Tailscale on all devices.

Then ssh into whatever you need.

If you need desktop remote access the Windows RDP should work for Windows to Windows machines.

For Linux host to Windows client I’ve had good experiences with Remmina Desktop.

You sure you can’t do what you need from bash/ssh?

If you only need ssh, anything can be terminal as everything has a ssh client.