I have three networked Win10/11 PCs at our small family business that occasionally need to be accessed and maintained from my Fedora PC at home. I’ve used Google Remote Desktop for a while but it’s unreliable and also F Google.

Was looking at the Gl-Inet Comet products which look promising as they say they work without cloud access, but they’re a tad spendy. If it’s the best option I’m willing to drop the coin.

Are there better options?

Thanks!

Edit: Wow, thank you all for so much useful feedback and excellent recommendations! I have lots to dig in to.

  • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    Lots of good alternatives advice already here but I have a couple comets and they work pretty well! They don’t require cloud access except for updates if you want them, I think it has Tailscale built in as well. Their newest one has an HDMI pass through as well which is handy in some situations. I have the PoE version of the other one and it works the same way, the power control kits work too! I also have a jet KVM and it’s fine, I like the comet better I think! They have also open sourced their cloud thing so you can centrally manage them all, it’s pretty neat!

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    IP Internet Protocol
    PoE Power over Ethernet
    SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
    VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access
    VPN Virtual Private Network

    5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.

    [Thread #160 for this comm, first seen 12th Mar 2026, 22:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    It sounds like what you really need is a mesh VPN not really KVM.

    Install Tailscale on all the machines and you’re set.

    Alternatively Hamachi.

    Edit: You could also install Tailscale on a single dedicated device on your destination network (such as a Raspberry Pi or mini PC) and configure it as a Tailscale router. This would enable you to access any IP-based device on the network without that device having Tailscale installed on it.

    With any of this you could access machines just like on the local network, using VNC or RDP.

    • GooeyGlob@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      Or Netbird, both work very well and Netbird can be completely self hosted; Tailscale requires Headscale AFAIK.

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      I was gonna suggest WireGuard but these are probably less work which is what a business wants.

      Another bonus is you have more than just Remote Desktop to manage things.

    • Zonefive@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      Amaze! I’m super excited to give this a try. If it works as described this will probably do everything I need it to. Thanks!