Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

For everyone wondering what this is:<p>Via <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;guacamole.apache.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;1.1.0&#x2F;gug&#x2F;preface.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;guacamole.apache.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;1.1.0&#x2F;gug&#x2F;preface.html</a><p>What is Guacamole?<p>Guacamole is an HTML5 web application that provides access to desktop environments using remote desktop protocols (such as VNC or RDP). Guacamole is also the project that produces this web application, and provides an API that drives it. This API can be used to power other similar applications or services.

I really like the idea implemented by Apache Guacamole, but when I tried to install it on my home server get remote desktops to my other machines when abroad, it was a huge letdown.<p>First of all the installation process is terrible, you need to install and configure a whole working tomcat8 server first and manually deploy the application WAR, configuration is non-obvious and obtuse, and the first ~10 tries after deploying Guacamole failed to establish VNC connections without a clear indication what went wrong. Over the years I&#x27;ve installed loads of services, not just trivial ones (e.g. nginx with SSL and multiple vhosts on different domains, reverse proxies, SSH tunnels, VPN servers, etc) and while I wouldn&#x27;t say installing Guacamole was <i>hard</i>, the process just felt unnecessarily complicated. Not a nice experience.<p>Second, when I finally managed to get Guacamole to establish a VNC connection to an OS X client, the performance was straight up horrible. That&#x27;s over a Gbit ethernet LAN, which I also use to stream games to a steam link at 60fps. Granted, this was connecting to desktop with 5K resolution and 32-bit color, but connecting to it directly using a VNC client works just fine. Through Guacamole it was literally unusable.<p>Is this to be expected?

I hope this project has matured since I last tried it (18 months ago).<p>As wOutert mentioned, the installation process is difficult and not for the faint of heart. Sure, most folks reading this here could manage it, but we&#x27;re not <i>normal</i>!<p>I really wanted this to work since I&#x27;m teaching at a school where all the Windows machines are locked down. I teach a Linux class. I teach a bunch of cyber-security classes and often need to install tools for this. Our IT administrators either refuse to let me install the software I need to teach or put up a huge stink.<p>I stood up a few VMs in my homelab for teaching and was hopeful that I could remote in painlessly. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth I finally got it working. And it worked well. About once a month I do a &quot;yum update&quot; on my CentOS machines and when it ran on this particular machine, it broke something in the Guac stack. I refused to spend the time to fix it!<p>Simultaneously, I&#x27;d been having trouble with TeamViewer. The unfortunate reality of any IT professional&#x27;s life is that you end up doing IT support for the family. TeamViewer was fine for years, but they started flagging my use as commercial. After looking and testing I found AnyDesk; it works every bit as well as TeamViewer and it has a Windows portable client; you don&#x27;t need to install anything on the client machine (no admin rights needed).<p>So now I either boot my machines from a USB stick with Linux or AnyDesk to where I need to go and my life is much better.<p>When Guacamole is mature and painless like AnyDesk, I&#x27;d give it another look.

Using it in production here since a few versions. It works perfectly for RDP (VMs that several non computer saavy people have to use including when abroad) and LDAP (slapd) for auth. Performance is really good even for tens of connections at the same time and the users are using old apps that tend to refresh half the screen each time a single pixel changes . Works on Linux, Mac and windows for the clients without having to give specific instructions for each. I used the docker containers for deployment to reduce the hassle As it is running on a VM anyway, I will switch that to ansible playbooks at some point, but the docker install was really smooth, I&#x27;m almost wondering if it is worth it.

It would be great if these sorts of posts would include a description of what&#x27;s big about these releases. If you were already excited about this Guacamole release, then you probably didn&#x27;t need the reminder.<p>Looking through the notes, this looks interesting...<p>&gt; Similar to Guacamole’s support for SSH and telnet, Guacamole can now provide terminal access to Kubernetes pods using the same mechanism as kubectl attach. This allows Guacamole to be used to interact with Kubernetes pods without requiring that those pods host an SSH or telnet service.<p>I have never used Guacamole or K8s (still stuck on Docker) but I assume this makes connecting to a containerized desktop much easier.<p>Great work to everyone involved.

Maybe the submitter could highlight they view as noteworthy in this release?

The antithesis of a good landing page.<p>I&#x27;d never heard of it before. What does Apache Guacamole actually do? Is it of interest to me? I click...<p>Nothing on the home page immediately tells me. I note HTML5 and there is something going on with a client and I guess a server? I scroll down the page. Literally, nothing telling me how Guacamole might be of interest to me, but I notice a mention to RDP - hmmm, that might be a clue, but it might not be.<p>I go up to docs. FAQ? OK, that might help. I click. Nope. Nothing. I scroll through the first five or six questions and I&#x27;m none the wiser.<p>I go back to the docs and notice the user manual. Surely that must tell me? I click.<p>Right, which section might tell me? Introduction? I click.<p>Several paragraphs in:<p>&gt; Guacamole is an HTML5 web application that provides access to desktop environments using remote desktop protocols (such as VNC or RDP). Guacamole is also the project that produces this web application, and provides an API that drives it. This API can be used to power other similar applications or services.<p>I realise F&#x2F;LOSS might not feel the need to &quot;market&quot; itself like it were a business, but is it too much to ask that the first thing we see on the home page is a brief description of what the project is, and some of the benefits so a curious chap can decide if it&#x27;s of interest?

If you like Apache Guacamole, you&#x27;ll love Glyptodon Enterprise.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;glyptodon.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;glyptodon.com&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;demo.glyptodon.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;demo.glyptodon.com&#x2F;</a><p>Led by the founders&#x2F;maintainers of Guacamole.

Nobody has mentioned it but the header says:<p><i>Apache Guacamole 1.1.0 has not yet been released! The artifacts and release notes below are drafts for a proposed release of Apache Guacamole which has not yet occurred.</i><p>So it would seem it has not been released yet.

&quot;Guacamole is an HTML5 web application that provides access to desktop environments using remote desktop protocols (such as VNC or RDP).&quot;<p>Shouldn&#x27;t this be front and center on the home page instead of having to find the manual and navigate to the second paragraph of the introduction?<p>That said, it looks like a cool idea and I wonder if it&#x27;s within the scope of a project like this to implement an abstraction on the keyboard such that using common macOS keyboard shortcuts are translated to their Linux or Windows equivalents (or vice versa). It&#x27;s a small peeve but I hate accidentally locking Windows when I meant to put focus on the address bar and start typing a URL...<p>UPDATE: I stand corrected: I missed that this wasn&#x27;t the home page... that&#x27;s what I get for commenting on a new story <i>before</i> I have my morning coffee.

I&#x27;ve looked at using this before to provide a &quot;thin client&quot; legacy desktop app - is anyone doing the same with Guacamole? Care to share your experience?

There is an AWS marketplace instance available if you search for &quot;guacamole&quot;. You log in at a public DNS as ubuntu with the instance-id for the password.<p>Instance functionality for that quick requirement at a modest fee.<p>Great product.

Interestingly this seems like what mighty app(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mightyapp.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mightyapp.com</a>) is doing