How can I enable font smoothing when I connect to a Windows server with Terminal Services Client?

When I fire up remote desktop on Windows and connect to my server (Windows Server 2008), the fonts look pretty smooth. I just installed Ubuntu 10.10 yesterday and when I use rdesktop to connect the fonts look terrible.

I've looked at all the settings but had no luck. Maybe there's some secret switch, or do I need to use a different client?

Solution 1:

Using remmina one can also enable font smoothing.

TL;DR : Choose the Best (slowest) "Quality" setting in the Advanced Tab when editing the RDP connection.

Longer answer:

When editing an RDP connection, there is a "Quality" setting under the Advanced tab. It can have one of the values Poor, Medium, Good or Best. Under Prefrences/RDP one can configure properties for each of these Quality settings like this:

By default only Best has "Font smoothing" enabled, so choose Best or configure the Quality setting you want to use to include Font smoothing.

(Testing using remmina version 1.2.0-rcgit-26 (git rcgit-26) from a ppa on Ubuntu 14.04)

Solution 2:

Use one of the following experience options:

rdesktop -x 0x8F mywinserver   # modem default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x81 mywinserver   # broadband default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x80 mywinserver   # LAN default + font smoothing

From http://katastrophos.net/andre/blog/2008/03/10/rdesktop-connect-to-windows-vista-with-cleartype-font-smoothing-enabled/

Fonts will be better

Solution 3:

Perhaps not completely helpful, since Wishi has already suggested it, but for the record, there's no reason that Remmina should be displaying "terrible" fonts. You won't get Cleartype, sure, but they should still be slick and readable.

Here's a screenshot from my Windows 2003 box :

That's running 16-bit colour, though. In order to try that, go to the settings page in Remmina and change it from 256 colours to 16-bit :

Solution 4:

Use the latest freerdp and give it the parameter -x 80. This is the user experience flag which enables everything that freerdp supports, so it should be identical to being directly on the box. (or at least it is for windows7).

These flags are documented by Microsoft here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc240476

I still have to enable font smoothing each time I reconnect to my windows 7 box and haven't found a way around that yet.

edit: xfreerdp flags kan be read here http://linux.die.net/man/1/xfreerdp