Remote Graphics Software

Last updated
Remote Graphics Software
Developer(s) HP Inc.
Stable release
7.7.1 / May 2020;4 years ago (2020-05)
Operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, HP ThinPro, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and for the RGS receiver macOS 10.10, 10.11, 10.12
Type Remote desktop software (client software and server software)
License Proprietary
Website www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/zcentral-remote-boost.html

HP ZCentral Remote Boost, formerly known as HP Remote Graphics Software or HP RGS, is a client-server remote desktop software developed by HP Inc. Launched in 2003. [1] HP RGS enables remote access to workstations (or virtual workstations [2] ) from many different devices, including other workstations and thin-clients. [3] Screen sharing between multiple users, remote USB, as well as Windows and Linux are supported. HP markets RGS for "Real-Time Collaboration," "Workstation-Class Mobility," and "Remote Workers" [4]

Contents

In 2014, HP released RGS 7.0 which brought remote workstation use cases to tablet devices. [5] The remote desktop tool has less latency and packet loss compared to Citrix HDX 3D or Teradici's PCoiP. [6] [7]

In 2020, HP updated and rebranded RGS as part of the HP ZCentral Solution. [8] ZCentral Remote Boost was awarded an Engineering Emmy Award in 2020. [9]

HP RGS processing and hardware-accelerated graphics are done on the workstation and only compressed bitmap images (the screen) are sent to the client device.

There are two components to the software, the sender (for the workstation or server) and the receiver (for the client device). The software supports OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX. The software is sold stand alone for servers, virtual machines and non-HP Workstations. HP started including RGS with all of its desktop Z brand workstations starting with version 5.4.7 in 2011. [10] RGS can be downloaded from HP and run on HP Z Workstations and ZBook mobile workstations for free.

An early version of the HP RGS video compression codec, is derived from a patented system developed by HP Labs and used in the NASA Mars rover program. [11]

Versions

From HP RGS' release notes website.

DateVersionMajor features added
October

2020

Remote Boost 2020.1Technology preview for enhanced Wacom support on Windows, macOS, RHEL and Ubuntu Receivers connecting to Windows and Linux Senders. hardware acceleration for AVC mode with GeForce (in addition to Quadro) graphics cards). Greater admin control over which users can access Senders.
May

2020

RGS 7.7.1RHEL 7.8 support. ThinPro 7.x support. HP Velocity now supported on MacOS Receivers. Frame rate improvement to reduce stutter for video playback. Additional properties to set display resolution and layout of sender.
March

2020

Remote Boost 2020.0New major version with support for new broker, HP ZCentral Connect. New scaling of remote desktop window on receiver side without impacting resolution on sender side. Auto-Launch files supported on Linux and macOS. Borderless mode now supported on macOS. User interface adjusts to high DPI displays. Improvements to WACOM Cintiq and Intuos remoting on Linux to Linux connections.
January 20197.6Decreased idle CPU usage on Linux senders using HP3. Increased performance for AVC on Windows 10 senders with Intel graphics. Added support for RHEL 6.10 and 7.6 and ThinPro 7.0. A new property has been added for resolution matching on Windows Senders with NVIDIA graphics without a physical display.
May 20187.5Bandwidth required for HP3 on Windows 10 is reduced. HP3 performance increase on Windows and Linux Sender. Experience controls Adaptive Image Quality is more responsive. Experience improvements: As of version 7.5, the operating system manages the HP RGS Receiver Window frame and scrollbars. The toolbar can be re-positioned horizontally by dragging the four dots at the left edge of the toolbar right or left. When the Receiver Window size is increased beyond the size of the Sender desktop, black bars will appear around the image. A new Hotkey, F, will fit the Receiver Window to the Sender desktop.
October 20177.4Restarting the Linux Sender no longer requires a restart of the X Server. Added support for RHEL 7.4 and SUSE 12 SP3. The FLEXnet license server for floating licenses must be version 11.14 or later to support RGS 7.4. Standard and Trial licenses are not affected. The FLEXnet license server is included with the HP RGS package. 64-bit versions of the Sender and Receiver for Windows are now available. Future versions of RGS will deliver only the 64-bit Sender and Receiver. The 32 and 64-bit versions of RGS are compatible with each other. The 64-bit version of RGS is installed in C:\Program Files\HP by default. If the Windows 10 version is updated after installing HP RGS, Remote USB may stop working. You will need to uninstall and then reinstall HP RGS. As of RGS 7.4, separate RGS installers are provided for different Linux Distributions.
February 20177.3.2HP added support for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12.2 and HP ThinPro version 6. MaxImageUpdateRate now applies to AVC mode. In previous releases this setting only applied to HP3 (the default image codec). Smart card redirection on Windows receiver supports a wider range of smart card reader devices including virtual smart cards, (Requires RGS 7.3.2 or later on both sender and receiver. Smart card redirection is supported on the following senders: Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 and now RHEL 6, RHEL 7, and SUSE Linux® Enterprise 12. (Linux® support is new in 7.3.2.) Smart card redirection is supported on Windows receivers only. On Windows-based and ThinPro-based receivers, smart cards can be remoted using Remote USB.
October 20167.3.1HP improved Windows sender performance when AMD and Intel graphics used. AVC mode performance improvements on Windows receivers. Improved resolution matching with Windows senders with NVidia graphics. New property to improve Velocity performance when connecting via VPN.
August 20167.3 (receiver for macOS)HP added an RGS receiver that runs native on macOS, allowing mac users to connect to Windows and Linux based workstations and virtual machines.
May 20167.2.3Added Sender properties to more easily configure VMware virtual machine displays for use with Nvidia GRID graphics
March 20167.2.2Enabled a smart card to be used to authenticate on a receiver and sender simultaneously for Windows
November 20157.2.0Added support for Windows 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2, Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 12. Reduced the occurrence of receiver network connection warning screens. Other various fixes
April 20157.1.0Improved performance with default HP3 codec, with higher framerate and/or higher screen resolution compared to 7.0. RGS HP3 can now use multiple CPU cores. WACOM tablet remoting with full functionality for Linux to Linux sessions. Improved audio experiences on Linux Advanced Video Compression (AVC) is now GPU-accelerated on Linux sender systems with GRID capable nVidia graphics devices. AVC on Linux also supports multi-monitor. AVC has been updated to the latest GRID SDK from nVidia on Windows and Linux platforms. Support for RHEL 7. New tools to configure properties via a UI, avoiding the need to directly edit the corresponding text based files (rgsenderconfig and rgreceiverconfig).
September 20147.0.1Added support for ThinPro 4.4 and 5.0. Added a sender property that allows ordering and selection of RGS license types. Easy Login functionality is no longer limited to certain hardware platforms.
June 20147.0Upgraded HP Velocity to version 2.1 to further improved connectivity and packet loss protection. Traffic protected by HP Velocity now uses UDP, rather than TCP. A host of new tablet features has been introduced: Gesture-to-hotkey mapping. Users can assign a series of keystrokes to a gesture via the new gestures tab in the UI. Virtual Mouse. The virtual mouse allows for precise onscreen mouse control on a tablet. Zoom & Pan. Tablet users are able to zoom and pan around the sender desktop. Various improvements to the user interface for touch optimization and improved toolbar control.
April 20146.0.5Added support for ThinPro 4.4 and new Bloomberg Keyboards. The use of the installer command line has changed. See the user guide for details.
March 20146.0.4Added a sender property that allows collaboration without displaying a collaboration authorization dialog (see rgsenderconfig).
6.0.2Added support for Advanced Video Compression in directory mode. Added support for RHEL 6.4. Enabled support for ThinPro 3.3, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.
February 20136.0RGS has a new UI look and feel. All UI components associated with RGS have been enhanced to improve aesthetics and usability. The RGS sender and receiver can be configured to encode screen updates with an H.264 codec. H.264 consumes less bandwidth when compared with legacy codecs in many situations. H.264 settings are available in the Performance tab of the Settings panel under "Advanced Video Compression". The RGS sender and receiver provide an install-time option to enable HP Velocity WAN optimization. This optimization provides improved network performance when packet loss and latency are present in the environment. Added support for Microsoft Windows 8 (desktop mode) for both Sender and Receiver.
June 20125.4.8Added Linux Screen blanking. Support for SLED11 Sender. Support for RHEL6.2 Sender. IP address filtering. Linux Audio enhancements. ThinPro 4.1. Linux "easy login" equivalent.
October 20115.4.7HP RGS now runs for free on HP Z Workstations and HP Mobile Workstations.
June 20115.4.6The HP RGS Sender on Windows Vista and Windows 7 now supports Single Sign-On and Easy Login. The Windows Sender installer enforces prerequisites when enabling Single Sign-On or Easy Login on Windows XP. These are: enable Control-Alt-Delete, disable Fast User Switching, and disable AutoLogon.
January 20115.4.5Mouse control improvement in Altair Hyperworks, Linux Audio Support for RHEL 4 and 5. Linux supported in a Virtual Machine.
April 20105.4.0Windows 7 support. Loss-less image codec. Smartcard reader support for Vista.
September 20095.3.0Windows Vista sender support. Open platform RGS sender support for HP and non-HP Windows XP and Vista Desktops, Notebooks and Workstations. Text cut, copy, paste between Linux and Windows senders and receivers. Hot keys for session minimize and disconnect. Auto remote selected USB devices at session connection and auto return to access client on session disconnect. Local license file support
November 20085.2.0Linux supports Norwegian keyboards. Windows Sender supports Traditional Chinese Korean and Russian Keyboards. Linux sender supports remote audio. Sender to sender cut and paste for Windows. Linux sender supports match receiver resolution. Receiver supports Windows Vista.
November 2003HP Remote WorkstationSupport for remote connection to HP Personal Workstations and collaboration

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thin client</span> Non-powerful computer optimized for remote server access

In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as network computers, or in their simplest form as zero clients. The server does most of the work, which can include launching software programs, performing calculations, and storing data. This contrasts with a rich client or a conventional personal computer; the former is also intended for working in a client–server model but has significant local processing power, while the latter aims to perform its function mostly locally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X Window System</span> Windowing system for bitmap displays on UNIX-like systems

The X Window System is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workstation</span> High-end single-user computer

A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM which powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windowing system</span> Software that manages separately different parts of display screens

In computing, a windowing system is a software suite that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP paradigm for a user interface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citrix Systems</span> American software company

Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. Citrix claims that their products are used by over 400,000 clients worldwide, including 99% of the Fortune 100 and 98% of the Fortune 500.

Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) is a proprietary protocol for an application server system, designed by Citrix Systems. The protocol lays down a specification for passing data between servers and clients, but is not bound to any one platform. Citrix's ICA is an alternative to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diskless node</span> Computer workstation operated without disk drives

A diskless node is a workstation or personal computer without disk drives, which employs network booting to load its operating system from a server.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desktop virtualization</span> Software technology

Desktop virtualization is a software technology that separates the desktop environment and associated application software from the physical client device that is used to access it.

In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely from one system, while being displayed on a separate client device. Remote desktop applications have varying features. Some allow attaching to an existing user's session and "remote controlling", either displaying the remote control session or blanking the screen. Taking over a desktop remotely is a form of remote administration.

This page is a comparison of notable remote desktop software available for various platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ThinLinc</span>

ThinLinc is a cross-platform remote desktop server developed by Cendio AB. The server software and the users' main desktops run on Linux. Clients are available for Linux, Windows, macOS, and a number of thin clients. A browser client using HTML5 technologies is also available.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS), known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and earlier, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allow a user to initiate and control an interactive session on a remote computer or virtual machine over a network connection. RDS was first released in 1998 as Terminal Server in Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, a stand-alone edition of Windows NT 4.0 Server that allowed users to log in remotely. Starting with Windows 2000, it was integrated under the name of Terminal Services as an optional component in the server editions of the Windows NT family of operating systems, receiving updates and improvements with each version of Windows. Terminal Services were then renamed to Remote Desktop Services with Windows Server 2008 R2 in 2009.

A Nirvana Phone was a marketing phrase coined by Citrix for a smartphone that could be docked with external displays and keyboards to create an alternative desktop or laptop computer system. It was to define a new category of mobile device with a capability beyond a conventional smartphone computer. The NirvanaPhone provides the processor, storage media, display adapter, communication channels, and operating system. The docking station provides power, and connectivity. To be useful the NirvanaPhone differs from a simple smartphone by having significant processing power, video output at high resolution, plus keyboard and mouse input. A smartphone is generally accepted as a device that has both mobile phone capability as well as an operating system that can run applications such as email, web browser, media player and personal organizers. The NirvanaPhone adds external monitor capability which could be a computer monitor, an HDTV, or a video projector. The dock could be a cradle, cable or a wireless connection. This allows the NirvanaPhone to run applications that can utilize a full-sized display for better readability or collaboration. Or in combination with a keyboard and mouse, perhaps using Bluetooth, the NirvanaPhone could act as a thin client connected to a virtual desktop for business use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wyse</span> American computing system manufacturer

Wyse Technology, Inc., or simply Wyse, was an independent American manufacturer of cloud computing systems. Wyse are best remembered for their video terminal line introduced in the 1980s, which competed with the market-leading Digital. They also had a successful line of IBM PC compatible workstations in the mid-to-late 1980s. But starting late in the decade, Wyse were outcompeted by companies such as eventual parent Dell. Current products include thin client hardware and software as well as desktop virtualization solutions. Other products include cloud software-supporting desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices. Dell Cloud Client Computing is partnered with IT vendors such as Citrix, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teradici</span> Canadian software company

Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by HP Inc. in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol (PCoIP) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessing blade servers, and implemented it in hardware. This technology was later expanded to thin clients/zero clients for general Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Teradici's protocol or hardware is used by HP, Dell-Wyse, Amulet Hotkey, Samsung, Amazon Web Services, Fujitsu, and VMware.

GPU virtualization refers to technologies that allow the use of a GPU to accelerate graphics or GPGPU applications running on a virtual machine. GPU virtualization is used in various applications such as desktop virtualization, cloud gaming and computational science.

Remote mobile virtualization, like its counterpart desktop virtualization, is a technology that separates operating systems and applications from the client devices that access them. However, while desktop virtualization allows users to remotely access Windows desktops and applications, remote mobile virtualization offers remote access to mobile operating systems such as Android.

Citrix Workspace is a digital workspace software platform developed by Citrix Systems. Launched in 2018, it is Citrix Systems' flagship product. Citrix Workspace is an information retrieval service where users can access programs and files from a variety of sources through a central application or a Web browser. In addition to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Workspace services include Citrix Endpoint Management, Citrix Content Collaboration, Citrix Access Control, microapp capabilities, usage analytics, and single sign-on capabilities to SaaS and Web apps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citrix Workspace App</span> Virtualization software client

Citrix Workspace App is the client component of XenDesktop, and XenApp, developed by Citrix Systems. It was released initially in 2009.

Citrix Virtual Apps is an application virtualization software produced by Citrix Systems that allows Windows applications to be accessed via individual devices from a shared server or cloud system.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.stpforum.com/public/showPage.html?page=424045
  2. ↑ "HP Blogs - HP extends leading Z Workstation family into virtu... - the HP Blog Hub". Archived from the original on 2014-08-19. Retrieved 2014-08-14.
  3. ↑ "HP Thin Clients".
  4. ↑ "Is anyone out there using (or heard of) hp's "Remote Graphics Software" (RGS)? - Brian Madden - BrianMadden.com". www.brianmadden.com. Archived from the original on 2010-12-10.
  5. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : HP Remote Graphics Software vs. Citrix Receiver on a Tablet | Z Workstations | HP. YouTube .
  6. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : HP RGS 7.0 vs. Citrix HDX 3D - WAN Long Distance Test | Z Workstations | HP. YouTube .
  7. ↑ HP RGS 7 vs. Teradici PCoIP Remote Workstation Card (Tera2) | Z Workstations | HP. YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-10.
  8. ↑ "HP Claims World First with ZCentral Remote Workstation Solution | Cadalyst". 2 July 2021.
  9. ↑ "The Show Must Go on – How HP ZCentral Remote Boost Made Remote Post-Production a Reality During a Global Pandemic".
  10. ↑ Ed Washington, AWN (Feb 2013). "HP Launches Remote Graphics Software Redesign".
  11. ↑ HP (Jan 2004). "HP Labs technology used to send most accurate images possible". Archived from the original on 2014-10-01. Retrieved 2014-08-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.