Remote Desktop on a Server: Linux VPS or Windows Bare Metal

A server you can see the screen of solves a surprising number of problems. A persistent desktop in the EU that keeps its session when your laptop closes, a browser that always leaves from the same address, a shared workstation for two people in different countries, or an application that only exists as a desktop program. All of that is a remote desktop question rather than a hosting question, and the answer splits cleanly in two.

A Linux desktop on a virtual machine covers most of it. A Windows application does not run on our VPS range at all, and this post is direct about where that line sits rather than selling you the wrong thing.

What runs on our VPS range

Every plan is a full KVM virtual machine with root access and a choice of Linux and FreeBSD images. Debian 12 or 13 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS are the sensible bases, and a desktop environment plus a remote desktop server on top of them is a twenty minute job.

• A light desktop. XFCE, LXQt or MATE rather than a heavy one. The lighter the desktop, the more of the machine is left for the work you actually came to do.
• A remote desktop server. An RDP server so any Windows or macOS client can connect, or a VNC server if you prefer. Both are packaged in the standard repositories.
• Browsers, editors, office suites, terminals, scripting. Everything that exists for Linux.
• No GPU. Rendering is on the processor. That rules out 3D work, video editing and anything that expects hardware acceleration.

What does not, and what to do instead

Windows Server images are offered on our dedicated servers, not on the VPS range. If your requirement is a Windows only application, a Windows desktop for a client, or software licensed to a Windows host, the honest answer is bare metal, which starts at €175 a month for a 128 GB machine with 16 cores and 32 threads. macOS is not something we offer at all.

If the requirement is only that a browser or a script runs somewhere stable in Europe with a fixed address, a Linux machine does that for a tenth of the price.

Sizing a desktop

RAM is the constraint, and the reason is almost always the browser. A desktop with eight tabs open uses more memory than the application you are running.

Plan	RAM	vCPU	SSD	Fits
Pulse	4 GB	2	40 GB	One session, a light desktop, a few browser tabs, terminal work
Core	8 GB	2	60 GB	One comfortable session, an office suite and a real browser
Forge	16 GB	4	80 GB	Two or three people, or one heavy user with many tabs
Apex	24 GB	6	100 GB	A small shared workstation, several concurrent sessions

Ion at 2 GB will boot a desktop and will not enjoy it. Start at Pulse, and remember a resize to a larger plan is an upgrade in the panel rather than a rebuild. Per city prices for every plan are in our price by location breakdown.

Latency decides whether it feels good

A desktop is the one workload where you personally feel every millisecond, because every keystroke waits for a round trip. Pick the city nearest to the people using it, not the city nearest to your servers.

City	From Frankfurt	Best for users in
Frankfurt	1 ms	Germany and most of Western Europe
Amsterdam	3 ms	The Benelux, the United Kingdom, the Nordics
Vienna	4 ms	Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia
Warsaw	7 ms	Poland and the Baltics
Bucharest	10 ms	Romania and the Balkans, and the lowest price on every plan

If two people in different regions share one desktop, put it near the one who uses it most and accept the compromise for the other, or run two.

Renting one for a project

A desktop that exists for the duration of one project does not need a monthly commitment. Every plan can be taken by the hour at the monthly price divided by 720, plus the location fee divided by 720. A Forge in Vienna is €0.0389 an hour, so a full working week of it, 40 hours, is €1.56, and leaving it up around the clock for that week, 168 hours, is €6.54.

Two rules keep that honest. Deleting the machine is what stops the charges, because a powered off machine still holds its disk and its address. And a desktop somebody logs into every day is an always on machine, which belongs on a monthly cycle, since 720 hourly units cost exactly one month.

Do not expose the desktop to the internet

This is the part that goes wrong. RDP and VNC ports are scanned constantly, and a desktop is a very attractive thing to find.

1. Bind the remote desktop service to localhost. Nothing on a public port.
2. Reach it through a tunnel. An SSH tunnel for one person, or a WireGuard tunnel for a team, which is the subject of our guide on running your own VPN server.
3. Close everything else. Allow SSH from your own addresses and nothing more. The rules in setting up a firewall are exactly what is needed here.
4. One account per person. Shared logins make it impossible to answer who did what, and impossible to revoke one person's access.
5. Patch it. A desktop has a browser, and a browser is the largest attack surface you can install. Automatic security updates, plus the basics in server security best practices.

What is included

One IPv4 address, which is usually the point of the exercise, with additional addresses at €1.50 each per month up to ten. Unmetered traffic, so a day of screen sharing is not a billing event. Extra disk in 50 GB units at €4 per unit per month if the desktop accumulates files. Power control, a console, a reinstall and a password reset in the client panel, so a session that wedges the machine does not need a support ticket.

Where to start

For one person who needs a stable European desktop, a Pulse or a Core in the city closest to them, on a monthly cycle, with the remote desktop reachable only through a tunnel. Plans are on the VPS page, the remote desktop workload page has the summary, and if the application you need to run is Windows only, say so in a reply and we will price the bare metal option properly instead of guessing.