How do I connect to a VCL environment using a Linux machine?

Depending on the environment you will need to use a remote desktop connection client or a ssh client. The ssh (secure shell) client is native to the linux operating system, open a terminal window and use the command 'ssh'.

The remote desktop client 'rdesktop' for Linux/Unix operating systems is a third party application downloaded from sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdesktop/. Depending on your distro, rdesktop may already be installed - open a terminal window and try to run the command rdesktop.

A full list of options are documented in rdesktop man page, but a sample command line might look like the following:

rdesktop -g 1024x768 -a 24 -r disk:home=/home/<userid> -r disk:root=/ -r printer:<localqueue>

There is a nice GTK frontend called tsclient for rdesktop. It is likely available on your distro as well.  If not, it can be dlownloaded from sourceforge as well: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tsclient

If accessing a windows VCL resource from NCSU campus Linux and Solaris lab machines, rdesktop is available through the netutils locker. Run the command 'add netutils' in a terminal window to access the rdesktop command.