Remote desktop to Windows 7 (or Windows 2008 server) which requires Network Level Authentication using freeRDP

FreeRDP is a free, open source implementation of the RDP protocol, according to the Microsoft Open Specifications. It is released under the Apache License and is available on OS X, Cygwin for Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris.

As of January 2012, FreeRDP adds support for Network Level Authentication. You can then use FreeRDP to connect to Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 which requires NLA by default.

Note: freeRDP is commonly used on Linux. Since

• Remote Desktop Connection for Mac OS X supports NLA.
• Windows XP SP3 added NLA support and NLA can be enabled by updating some registry values. Linux is the platform that does not have native support for MS therefore, currently you have no other choice but to use FreeRDP.

To install freeRDP on Ubuntu Linux:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freerdp-team/freerdp
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install freerdp

To use freerdp to connect to a remote Windows machine:

xfreerdp --plugin cliprdr -g 1024x768 -k no -u {username} -d {domain} {remote-windows-machine}