[appease7727]

I've been digging into this for years and it seems the consensus is simply RDP of some flavor. Mainly VNC derivatives and NX. NoMachine ticks all the boxes, it can manage spawning shells and passing audio and files. But I dunno, I just don't like it that much. It's not at all the same kind of magic that X forwarding is.

[bluGill]

We had those terminal servers, but also full work stations that you logged into directly. x forwarding is magic when you can share/ use an expensive/powerful computer but most of the time the local computer is fast and cheap (these days a modern destop run circles around a then supercomputer)