How can I enable font smoothing when I connect to a Windows server with Terminal Services Client?

Question

When I fire up remote desktop on Windows and connect to my server (Windows Server 2008), the fonts look pretty smooth. I just installed Ubuntu 10.10 yesterday and when I use rdesktop to connect the fonts look terrible.

I've looked at all the settings but had no luck. Maybe there's some secret switch, or do I need to use a different client?

hmmm... looking at terminal services client, it only supports RDP 5.0. ClearType was added in RDP 6.0, looks like I might need a different client. — Andy E, Jan 20 '11 at 10:35
Perhaps RDP 6.0 is required for ClearType, but "Font Smoothing" _is_ possible using RDP 5.0 and that made a huge difference for me. — Peter V. Mørch, Feb 11 '18 at 09:35

score 34 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 11 '18 at 09:30

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Using remmina one can also enable font smoothing.

TL;DR : Choose the Best (slowest) "Quality" setting in the Advanced Tab when editing the RDP connection.

Longer answer:

When editing an RDP connection, there is a "Quality" setting under the Advanced tab. It can have one of the values Poor, Medium, Good or Best. Under Prefrences/RDP one can configure properties for each of these Quality settings like this:

By default only Best has "Font smoothing" enabled, so choose Best or configure the Quality setting you want to use to include Font smoothing.

(Testing using remmina version 1.2.0-rcgit-26 (git rcgit-26) from a ppa on Ubuntu 14.04)

answered Feb 11 '18 at 09:30

Peter V. Mørch

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thanks! using "best" quality settings and doing chrome and firefox restart fixed by font issues (enter "about:restart" in chrome and "about:profiles" in firefox to click restart button) – Mariusz Pawelski Feb 21 '19 at 09:05
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game changer!!! – Vitaliy Terziev May 23 '19 at 13:40
Wow! It fixed broken font rendering when using Google Chrome over RDP – makerj Nov 12 '19 at 07:32
Note: The RDP quality settings can be changed in the Remmina general settings. I could not find those advance quality settings on the settings window of the connection setting. – Melroy van den Berg Feb 05 '23 at 21:14

score 25 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 02 '14 at 16:01

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Use one of the following experience options:

rdesktop -x 0x8F mywinserver   # modem default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x81 mywinserver   # broadband default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x80 mywinserver   # LAN default + font smoothing

From http://katastrophos.net/andre/blog/2008/03/10/rdesktop-connect-to-windows-vista-with-cleartype-font-smoothing-enabled/

Fonts will be better

edited Jun 02 '14 at 16:01

John Slade

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answered May 22 '11 at 17:21

user18352

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+1 and the green tick — excellent find, thanks! – Andy E May 22 '11 at 18:28
+1 and here is an example of the fonts being much improved in Outlook composition windows: [Example of improving font rendering from Windows 7 to rdesktop](http://i.imgur.com/ZLpDlNi.png) by using `-x 0x80` – bgoodr Oct 15 '16 at 18:24
Not working for me. Cleartype is still turned off even with the `-x 0x80` switch, when connecting using rdesktop version 1.8.3 to a Windows 7 Professional host. – Michael Goldshteyn Jul 13 '18 at 14:54
`-x 0x8F` enables ClearType for me, with rdesktop 1.8.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 to Windows 8.1. – Reinier Post Mar 26 '19 at 17:11

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 15 '16 at 18:08

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Use the latest freerdp and give it the parameter -x 80. This is the user experience flag which enables everything that freerdp supports, so it should be identical to being directly on the box. (or at least it is for windows7).

These flags are documented by Microsoft here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc240476

I still have to enable font smoothing each time I reconnect to my windows 7 box and haven't found a way around that yet.

edit: xfreerdp flags kan be read here http://linux.die.net/man/1/xfreerdp

edited Oct 15 '16 at 18:08

bgoodr

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answered May 21 '12 at 12:21

Amias

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When using `xfreerdp`, add the option `+fonts` to smooth the fonts. – Ruslan Jan 23 '20 at 09:33

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 21 '11 at 21:09

Perhaps not completely helpful, since Wishi has already suggested it, but for the record, there's no reason that Remmina should be displaying "terrible" fonts. You won't get Cleartype, sure, but they should still be slick and readable.

Here's a screenshot from my Windows 2003 box :

Remmina RDP Client

That's running 16-bit colour, though. In order to try that, go to the settings page in Remmina and change it from 256 colours to 16-bit :

Remmina Settings Page

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 20 '11 at 14:00

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My guess is that you want to check out remmina (http://remmina.sourceforge.net/) which has quality options for RDP 5. I'm not aware that there's an RDP 6 client for us for the time being.

answered Jan 20 '11 at 14:00

wishi

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Thanks for your answer. Unfortunately RDP 5 doesn't support ClearType. I looked at Remmina and it's based on FreeRDP, which is a fork of rdesktop. Both only support upto RDP 5. – Andy E Jan 20 '11 at 15:21

How can I enable font smoothing when I connect to a Windows server with Terminal Services Client?

5 Answers5