Please have a look at the warnings in the comments:
Rustdesk looks good on the outside, but if you look inside, it has a really bad codebase and has done some sketchy stuff in the past.
Last year, it installed custom root certificates as trusted on windows, which is a huge security risk: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/6444
On linux systems, it forced its own autostart with no option to disable this behavior: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/issues/4863
In the past, when it didn’t have Wayland support yet, it edited your GDM config and just disabled wayland: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/1.1.9/src/platform/linux.rs#L411-L422
Furthermore, the code quality is really bad. 90% of the linux platform-dependant code is just executing shell commands and parsing their output, while the same could be achieved in a safe way with proper rust builtins: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/master/src/platform/linux.rs
While I agree that Rustdesk works pretty flawlessly, the codebase and the behavior of the developers made me distrust the software and I don’t recommend using it.
Wth is that, that is the most anti-idiomatic code I have ever seen
https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/blob/master/src%2Fplatform%2Flinux.rs#L176
pub fn get_cursor() -> ResultType<Option<u64>> { let mut res = None; DISPLAY.with(|conn| { if let Ok(d) = conn.try_borrow_mut() { if !d.is_null() { unsafe { let img = XFixesGetCursorImage(*d); if !img.is_null() { res = Some((*img).cursor_serial as u64); XFree(img as _); } } } } }); Ok(res) }I’m not an expert but this seems wrong.
Yep, I’m not a Rust expert either, but this is pretty cursed. The comments on this post have some more examples of bad rustdesk code: https://lobste.rs/s/njfvjb/rustdesk_with_tailscale_on_arch_linux
I self-host my own rustdesk server and it’s awesome. It just works flawlessly.
Itsfoss is blogspam and often have many mistakes and wrong info. People should really stop posting links from them.
Itsfoss is indeed written by ChatGPT I think
I have setup a rustdesk server with docker, it was surprisingly easy to get started. It was for a friend who is managing the IT services of a small factory, the completely switched from TeamViewer and they are satisfied. More importantly their users, who are worse than your average windows user, found the transition relatively painless.
Wasn’t there some controversy about this that it wasn’t entirely open-source?
they have a pro server with more features that’s closed source and paid
But why do you need a server for such a program? Can’t it be P2P or with the server stuff running on the client machine?
The server is used for hole punching, to open up a P2P connection thorugh NATs and Firewalls. If it doesn’t work the server also relays the traffic between the clients.
Getting an end to end connection through todays internet is unfortunately not easy for an average user.
DO NOT USE THIS
This is a massive security risk and they have had so much controversy. They also routinely delete Github issues and discussions that question them. To top it off they are likely Chinese run.
Source:
China is good though? At least that ensures they aren’t a CIA operation.
