The new version of the open source web-based remote desktop server Guacamole now supports Microsoft's proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as well as VNC. According to the developers, Guacamole 0.6.0 also has speed improvements and better compatibility with mobile browsers and touchscreen devices.

Guacamole's backend is a Java Servlet Container, usually running on Apache Tomcat, that users can connect to with any browser that supports HTML5 and AJAX. For VNC compatibility, Guacamole uses libvncclient, and RDP connectivity is provided via the FreeRDP project. The developers claim that this makes their project "the first open-source project to provide a full, generalized, multi-protocol remote desktop gateway over HTML5."

Guacamole 0.6.0 is available in source code form for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Binary packages for Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora (32- and 64-bit) can also be downloaded. Guacamole is licensed under the AGPLv3.

(Alexandra Kleijn / fab)