Hello everyone! I have been reading a lot of posts on this subreddit in an effort to find the best way to remote into my main desktop from my laptop, and while I’ve found a lot of leads, there aren’t a lot of clear answers that satisfy everything I want. So, I’m asking if there’s a way to remote into a PC with:
The ability to turn the PC on, either from sleep or a full shutdown (WOL is an option for me, but if I could do it without having to turn that on that would be great)
Secure access (meaning there won’t constantly be a risk to either of my computers when using the service)
easy setup
keeping the installed programs at a minimum, as I’d rather not install 50 different programs just to remote into my PC
My main usage case is both gaming and work related, so a low latency option will be appreciated. Thanks, y’all!
Edit: I also want whatever solution to be free, and open-source is prefered!
You’re mentioning school and work related things in your post. Do you work for a school and want to connect a private device to a school PC? Because I can think of a huge amount of security and data protection problems that you might want to clear up with your IT dept before you attempt this.
You aren’t powering it on remotely unless you get something like a PiKVM and hook in the front headers. On a school network magic packets are usually filtered at the switchport so WoL probably won’t work (unless your school is small enough this doesn’t affect them).
VPN, Firewall rules, HTTPS. Follow best practice guides for the software you are using.
Ignore the ability to turn it on. Spin up a VPS in a nearby city. Install WireGuard on it, and have your laptop and desktop connect to it. Boom, simple and straightforward, maybe an hour of time max if you want to tinker. RDP straight from the laptop to the desktop. Simple yet effective starting point.
You’ll have your desktop connection software, VPN software, and probably a connection broker at minimum. Add more as you need it.
Reading through some of your posts… you may want to consider Steam. You can run applications on your PC and stream them to your laptop. They do t have to be games available on steam. You can add any executable. I haven’t had much success but I haven’t had much of a reason to try and I’ve heard others having very good success with low latency, which would also solve your gaming issue.
No, it’s not a school PC, it’s my own laptop that I use to work on school work (my school does not have access to the rest of my files).
The work related thing is just me needing to be able to edit videos while I’m away for my YouTube, just so I can push out videos with footage I have on my desktop.
Ah i see. I’m assuming PiKVM runs off an external device (a Raspberry Pi) then? Cause I’d really rather not have to use Raspberry Pi’s as my solution
Ah, I see, so the same security rules for when I’m using the internet normally. Gotcha. (Also I’ve heard Tailscale is a VPN from other commenters, is this true and is this recommended generally?)
I’m assuming a VPS is a virtual private server. Is that something that requires money or is there a free option that is open source?
Both of my computers run on Windows, and I believe my main PC is running Windows 11 Pro.
I don’t know what either of those entail, so I’ll just say GUI.
What is a KVM?
Also, if I don’t end up being able to use it for games, that’s okay. My true main concern is being able to edit together videos with the video files that are on my main PC (most of my footage lives on there and I’d rather not transfer it to my laptop as the laptop does not have that much storage)
I have been using remote desktop software for 20+ years and I absolutely love RustDesk.
Its very much like a TeamViewer that you can run yourself
Program runs on just about everything Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS and will use a free public ID/Rendezvous/Relay servers to nat punch or relay the connection
You can run your own server for free there are 2 parts
ID/Rendezvous server (Clients will ping this server to report there IP for nat punching)
Relay server (if the client cant nat punch it will use this server to relay the connection)
You can get the server for Windows (2 exe’s you run as a service) or Linux
Running your own server can speed up the connections especially the relay if you use that.
The main thing they charge for in the “pro” version is a web server that runs an address book you can sync to the clients.
But with the free version you can manually sync the favorites list if you have multiple clients or make your own address book with links to rustdesk://#ID# to launch the connections.
I have been extremely impressed with the stability and speed of the connections running my own server with 200 clients it preforms better then my old TeamViewer 11 license
I think the people that make it are based in Singapore? but I am not 100% sure.
