I’ve been an IT professional for 20 years now, but I’ve mainly dealt with Windows. I’ve worked with Linux servers through out the years, but never had Linux as a daily driver. And I decided it was time to change. I only had 2 requirements. One, I need to be able to use my Nvidia 3080 ti for local LLM and I need to be able to RDP with multiple screens to my work laptop running Windows 10.
My hope was to be able to get this all working and create some articles on how I did it to hopefully inspire/guide others. Unfortunately, I was not successful.
I started out with Ubuntu 22.04 and I could not get the live CD to boot. After some searching, I figured out I had to go in a turn off ACPI in boot loader. After that I was able to install Ubuntu side by side with Windows 11, but the boot loader errored out at the end of the install and Ubuntu would not boot.
Okay, back into Windows to download the boot loader fixer and boot to that. Alright, I’m finally able to get into Ubuntu, but I only have 1 of my 4 monitors working. Install the NVIDIA-SMI and reboot. All my monitors work now, but my network card is now broken.
Follow instructions on my phone to reinstall the linux-modules-extra package. Back into Windows to download that because, you know, no network connections. Reinstall the package, it doesn’t work. Go into advanced recovery, try restoring packages, nothing is working. I can either get my monitors to work or my network card. Never both at the same time.
I give up and decide it’s time to try out Fedora. The install process is much smoother. I boot up 3 of 4 monitors work. I find a great post on installing Nvidia drivers and CUDA. After doing that and rebooting, I have all 4 monitors and networking, woohoo!
Now, let’s test RDP. Install FreeRDP run with /multimon, and the screen for each remote window is shifted 1/3 of the way to the left. Strange. Do a little looking online, find an Issue on GitHub about how it is based on the primary monitor. Long story short, I can’t use multiple monitor RDP because I have different resolution monitors and they are stacked 2x2 instead of all in a row. Trust me I tried every combination I could think of.
Someone suggested using the nightly build because they have been working on this issue. Okay, I try that out and it fails to install because of a missing dependency. Apparently, there is a pull request from December to fix this on Fedora installs, but it hasn’t been merged. So, I would need to compile that specific branch myself.
At this point, I’m just so sick of every little thing being a huge struggle, I reboot and go back into Windows. I still have Fedora on there, but who would have thought something that sounds as simple as wanting to RDP across 4 monitors would be so damn difficult.
I’m not saying any of this to bag on Linux. It’s more of a discussion topic on, yes, I agree that there needs to be more adoption on Linux, but if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.
Of course if anyone has any recommendation on getting my RDP working, I’m all ears on that too.
I read the first paragraph and saw your prerequisites included working with nvidia.
That is a non-starter, right there. You can blame Linux for a whole lot of little flaws, but most of the blame should go to your hardware vendor for providing shitty support for Linux.
Isn’t most of the AI training work in the world done on Linux using Nvidia GPUs (in the cloud)? I guess it’s a different use case…
Probably dedicated vector/tensor coprocessors these days - which don’t have to work with your monitor layout or desktop setup!
And it also sucks in the cloud. Depending on the scenario there might not be many alternatives, though. CUDA is pretty much the standard in machine learning.
ROCm has hints of adoption, but it’s only just getting started.
Having spent the weekend trying to get it working on WSL2 for lulz, I can honestly say it’s just not there yet. Most of the issue is that AMD cards aren’t exposed properly through WSL, but it was worth a shot.
Sure. But by the amount of adoption CUDA has, and the amount of GPUs / AI accelerators NVidia pumps out and into the datacenters of the world… AMD better hurry (and deliver an excellent product/ecosystem) or they won’t be part of the AI boom.
thats guiless.
x11 and wayland support (what matters for DESKTOP use) are complete garbage
Popos has out-of-the-box nvidia support that works great
Works with CUDA and RDPing on a 2x2 monitor grid?
System76 (who makes popos) has their own CUDA repo for their NVIDIA implementation, but I don’t think it’s installed by default. So there’s a tweaked version to work on popos, but I’ve never tried it. From some cursory googling, it doesn’t seem to be too complicated to set up.
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Yeah it’s really weird. I have done what OP has done for a while now on an Nvidia GPU and Pop!_OS with KDE and have had 0 issues. I don’t use a 2x2 grid though. Can that really be the issue?
I agree. The majority of my issues come down to the manufacturers. I even updated my BIOS to see if it would help with the ACPI issues, but no luck. Motherboard is 3 years old, so it’s not like I’m trying this on brand new hardware either.
Non starter? As in you shouldn’t use Linux if you have a nvidia gpu? I hope that isn’t the take.
Microsoft is free to publish minimum requirements for Windows (TPM 2.0 for Windows 11, for instance), but you don’t have that in Linux. You are free to throw it at any hardware you want, and it will mostly work out of the box.
But that depends on companies and volunteers working on the hardware support. Intel and AMD provide good support for their hardware. NVidia does not. You should act accordingly, either buying supported hardware or sticking to software that supports your hardware (Windows or Mac).
You don’t have to tell the whole internet that you only use linux to play video games. At no point did I recommend buying a nvidia gpu for linux, I said owning a nvidia gpu should not stop you from running linux. If you genuinely can’t figure out how to get nvidia drivers working (no extra work for many distros), you have an enormous skill issue and should do more reading than commenting on lemmy.
Having a nVidia GPU does not stop you from running Linux, it just makes it more painful depending on what you’re trying to achieve due to nVidia’s poor Linux support.
I merely suggest that one should use the appropriate tool for the job or endure the consequences. Blaming the tools achieves nothing.
You told me how to act when I said Nvidia shouldn’t stop you from running linux. There’s a distinction between suggesting something and telling someone how to act. Goofy stuff.
Its not totally wrong honestly. Nvidia is kind of bad and you can get a used AMD GPU for $100 bucks.
If you are using Nvidia use Linux mint or Pop os.
It’s totally wrong imo. Having a Nvidia gpu should not all stop you from using Linux. Granted I’m still on X and can’t run AAA games but I have no issues with it otherwise. Running cuda happily along with everything else I need to build companies, create content, and consume media.
Or Fedora, or Arch, or a bunch of other distros because most all have solid support.
Edit: whole bunch of gamers out here
“Nvidia, fuck you!” - Linus Torvalds
Nvidia is by far the most popular dedicated GPU manufacturer out there. If distros can’t figure out how to make it “just work” then Linux will never take off outside of the nerd market.
It isn’t something that is in the distro vendors control. Nvidia do not disclose programming info for their chipsets. They distribute an unreliable proprietry driver that is obfuscated to hell so that noone can help out fixing their problems.
If you use an AMD card it will probably work fine in Windows and Linux. If you use an Nvidia card you are choosing to run windows or have a bad time in Linux.
It doesn’t matter whose at fault at the end of the day. If it doesn’t just work™️ the average joe will never use it.
The open source vs closed source drivers is a whole separate issue too, and only makes things worse for the noobs.
I’m not the PR department for desktop Linux for everyone man.
People who only have Windows experience see an Nvidia card that is premium priced product with a premium experience and think that this will translate to a Linux environment, it does not. I’ve been using Linux for like 27 years now and that was my opinion until a couple of years ago.
Hopefully the folks that might read this thread ( like the OP 20 year IT veteran ) can take away that Nvidia cards in linux are the troublesome / subpar choice and are only going to get worse going forwards ( because of the Wayland migration that Nvidia are ignoring ).
That’s a great explanation. Knowing next to nothing about Nvidia and Linux, the original comment made it sound as though Linux is just wildly incompetent.
Your comment makes it sound like Nvidia is the graphics version of apple.
Oh yeah. That video of Linus Torvalds giving Nvidia the finger linked elsewhere in this thread was the result of a ton of frustration around them hiding programming info. They also popularised a dodgy system of LGPL’ing a shim which acted as the licence go-between the kernel driver API ( drivers are supposed to be GPL’d ) and their proprietary obfuscated code.
Despite that, I’m not really that anti them as a company. For me, the pragmatic reality is that spending a few hundred bucks on a Radeon is so much better than wasting hours performing arcane acts of fault finding and trial and error.
The problem is Nvidia’s drivers, not the distros.
You may as well be saying distros really need to get their shit together on releasing Photoshop for Linux
If someone with no experience installs Linux on their machine, and has to spend 20 hours fixing all of the problems they’re not going to stick with Linux. It doesn’t matter which distro it is, they’re just going to say Linux sucks and never use it again.
There’s a pretty big difference between trying to run software for X OS on Y OS, and trying to just make your computer do basic tasks. The average person doesn’t know that Nvidia are a bunch of assholes, nor do they care.
I know.
But there’s nothing that can realistically be done about it until Nvidia stops being dickheads.
Distros can’t constantly hop about putting out fires that Nvidia starts, and neglect the other work they need to do.
Even when they do that, it doesn’t work anyway. It’s still buggy, systems still break. It really is only Nvidia who can fix their shit drivers, unless the nouveau team make an alternative that’s superior to Nvidia’s proprietary drivers.
And nah, there’s no difference between my Nvidia/Photoshop example. None whatsoever.
I swear, every time one of these posts/comments pops up, the chances root issues are caused by Nvidia hardware is insanely high.
So, I’m coming to learn that about Nvidia. I figured with the 3080 being a few years old now things would be alright. I was wrong.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What’s a decent GPU that behaves nicely with Linux?
I have two AMD Radeon cards for Linux that I’m pretty happy with that replaced a couple of Nvidia cards. They are an RX6800 and an RX6700XT. They were both ex mining cards that I bought when the miners were dumping their ethereum rigs, so they were pretty cheap.
If I had to buy a new card to fill that gap, I’d probably get a 7800XT, but if you don’t game on them you could get a much lower end model like an RX7600.
I’d be interested in one that could do gaming and compute stuff. Thank you for the specific recs, I’ll check those out!
Most AMD GPUs are good
In my experience most things AMD fare pretty well. My 6750 XT is working great. My older RX 580 and Radeon HD 6870 were also pretty solid.
Most of AMD is good. Slightly older is going to be best
Might have Luck with Leap or Tumbleweed because nVidia hosts their own openSUSE driver repos. add nVidia repo to SUSE, GUI select the driver and click OK
Perhaps we could suggest OP other things to try before we suggest they should rip out their GPU. I don’t know, basic problem-solving approach, like using the Nouveau or generic Vesa driver to rule out the proprietary Nvidia driver, or a different screen-sharing method to rule out RDP. Which is a proprietary Windows protocol so it may not work perfectly from Linux and with an unusual hardware configuration.
I don’t completely disagree with you. But it’s also a reality I’ve had to deal with myself as well. My personal take is I’d rather avoid the brand altogether if you care about Linux, but I also realize it’s not always possible if you care about - or need, for various reasons - things like CUDA, NVENC and RTX. In this case, OP specifically wants CUDA, and that won’t work without the proprietary driver.
Life is easier with a mediocre workstation card for video outputs, and the Nvidia card doing just CUDA.
From what I’ve read, I must be the luckiest person in the world. I’ve been on Linux for 10+ years and only ever had Nvidia hardware. I’ve never had any issues aside from the occasional Vsync annoyance.
Windows admin here. It was immediately clear to me how this would end:
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someone proficient in windows goes back to being a dumb newbie is gonna be frustrating as heck.
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being a power user/IT professional most likely means non standard setup
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there are very few windows native admins in the linux sphere to test things from a non dev/non user perspective
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the companies making „professional“ linux are still not comparable to M$
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„professional linux“ would probably be RHEL for you.
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you can try and run a windows vm in your linux to try if stuff works then.
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your mindset needs to change: you‘re now a guy responsible for implementing rdp correctly, embrace open source and make it work for everyone. See the amount of influence you can actually have.
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if you can, consider using windows and linux side by side as long as needed, until stuff works. Find the reasons people abandon windows (i.e. you finally have control).
Just a stream of ideas. Hmu if you have any questions.
All extremely valid points. Especially…
- your mindset needs to change: you‘re now a guy responsible for implementing rdp correctly, embrace open source and make it work for everyone. See the amount of influence you can actually have.
This is the mind set I need. I was most likely so frustrated at the driver issues by this point, I probably didn’t give it the go it needed. Like I said when it came to compiling a dev branch, I just said f it. Hopefully I’ll get some time in the coming days to approach it with a fresh mindset.
Awesome to hear it. Feel free to update.
someone proficient in windows goes back to being a dumb newbie is gonna be frustrating as heck.
This was me. I kept thinking Linux was making things “overly complicated” until I really stopped to consider how extremely complicated it is in Windows or MacOS to do anything, we’re just all used to it. Once I re-framed my perspective to that of “a noob that was learning” it made it so much less frustrating and now after learning I see that Linux in most ways does things so much simper.
Now I don’t think it’s ease-of-use issues that prevent people from going with Linux, it’s switching costs. Few have time to learn a new system. Even if it is the easiest to learn.
That’s a lesson I learned switching to macos for a few years. After spending that much I basically had no choice but to learn to adapt.
It did make it a lot easier to switch to Linux later on because I’ve already abandoned a workflow and a set of apps once already.
I completely agree that linux is quite simple. Additionally, it allows for a lot of customization which is nice imo.
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if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.
The average user just wants to open up a browser to use tiktok, instagram, gmail, and whatever else it is people use these days. Maybe edit a few documents and look at local pictures? The average user isn’t going to use RDP or train an LLM.
As others have said: NVIDIA sucks for linux. They have sucked for linux for more than a decade (snippet). And RDP: try Remmina.
Also dualbooting is so-so. Windows likes to mess up the bootloader for no reason during updates. If you switch, it’s best to go full linux or try first from a VM.
Did you just CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 your comment?
Looks like it, doesn’t it?
Even the average user will sometimes need non-average features.
Maybe they want to print a document and have an old HP printer laying somewhere.
Maybe they want to try this AI filter thingy that is such a fad on Tiktok
Maybe they need to digitally sign a document, or log in using their card reader and government ID to do their taxes.
If even one of those don’t work how they should immediately out of the box, then Linux is not for the average user.
Maybe they want to print a document and have an old HP printer laying somewhere.
Linux is probably your best bet actually.
Maybe they want to try this AI filter thingy that is such a fad on Tiktok
Browsers work on linux
Maybe they need to digitally sign a document, or log in using their card reader and government ID to do their taxes.
All works on linux, most likely even works through the browser (which is what I’ve been doing).
If even one of those don’t work how they should immediately out of the box, then Linux is not for the average user.
And they work “out of the box” on windows? You have to go to a download page, to get the right driver, ensure you have the right windows version and service pack (those are still a thing right?), restart your computer and hope it worked. Hey, maybe there’s even some new fangled “security measure” that installs a rootkit that requires you to go into your BIOS to activate a feature in order for it to work.
Since it’s not “out of the box”, maybe windows should also be canned, right?
IT for 20 years
Can’t use a live CD
Uh huh
I can believe it. Because OP is trying to make Linux work like Windows. Note how for remote access, they jump straight to RDP and don’t even bother with SSH. Which Windows 10/11 has a native client for.
I mean, the rdp is from Linux to Windows for desktop application access, so it’s the right tool for that job.
No. They’re installing an RDP server (that is, you connect to the Linux box via RDP, not the other way around), not a client like Remmina.
I need to be able to RDP with multiple screens to my work laptop running Windows 10.
They aren’t.
Ohhh…they’re fucking around with FreeRDP? Why?! Even for someone who comes from Windows, how did they not just go ‘fuck this, there’s got to be a better way’ and spend 5 more minutes Googling to find Remmina?
Guess I should have said love USB, but some old habits die hard. Either way having to go in and disable ACPI just to get it to boot is not something most people would be comfortable with.
It’s also frankly not something they should have to do either.
love USB
That sounds funky, I like it!
Damn autocorrect
I mean… You’re expecting your system which likely shipped with support for Windows to just work with Linux. Linux support by vendors is often non-existent and requires oss developers to play catch up.
FUD
To be fair, that’s not much of a thing with windows
I have 1 machine that will not boot most debian distros, and if they do it will not boot after install. It is a BIOS bug. non debian distros acknoledge the bug and move on.
Multiple mistakes:
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You went with a very old distro, Ubuntu 22.04 is almost 2 years old. You could pick a non-lts ubuntu instead. Thankfully you ended up picking Fedora.
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A single google search could’ve given you better alternatives to FreeRDP like Remmina. You can always ask people stuff like this on Lemmy or elsewhere (“what’s the best rdp client on linux?”) rather than waiting till you run out of patience.
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You shouldn’t need to compile software by yourself, you can use flatpak to install newer versions of software and flathub even has a beta repo you can add for even newer software.
It’s not against you, we all learn from mistakes. Just try to be more social about your linux journey if you don’t want to struggle
Tldr: you made the classic mistake of going head first into this without a friend to help you or at least documenting yourself properly on the current state of Linux desktops through various medias like Youtube. It doesn’t help that you suffered from the ol’ “I’m a windows expert so this should be similar/easy and if it fails it’s not my fault”
Ubuntu 22.04 is not “very old”. It’s the latest LTS release of Ubuntu. I do not, at all, fault an IT professional for picking the LTS release instead of the absolute latest latest release.
I think it is a communication failure for Linux to not communicate that the jump between Linux distro versions (e.g. from Fedora 38 to Fedora 39) is not the same as a jump from Windows 8 to Windows 10. It is similar to the jump between the different Windows subversions, like from 21H2 to 22H2. Most people don’t even know what those numbers mean, and for most people, it doesn’t matter. A distro upgrade is nothing more than a big update, and that’s how I think it ought to be presented. People should be encouraged to use the non-LTS version as a default, and gently nudged to upgrade once a new one comes out. It shouldn’t be presented as a conplete change in operating system versions, but rather as a feature update. That’s what Windows does, and Windows versions are practically invisible!
The support for larger numbers of monitors and mixed resolutions and odd layouts in KDE vastly improved in the ubuntu 23.04 release. I wouldn’t install anything other than the latest LTS release for a server ( and generally a desktop ), but KDE was so much better that it was worth running something newer with the short term aupport on my desktops.
We aren’t too far off the next LTS that will include that work anyway I guess. I’m probably going to be making the move to debian rather than trying that one out though.
While you make many valid points, I think it’s not reasonable to assume that OP could have avoided all the struggles they had, if they just had informed himself prior to installing. Especially since many of them problems described were probably caused by an unfortunate combination of software/driver issues, a specific hardware setup and certain user expectations.
I doubt that watching tech YouTubers or similar would have helped much.
Also, dont download packages as .rpm /.deb files, that almost never works. They could have just used their phone with usb-tethering to get Ethernet. I suppose.
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but if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.
Do you think “your average user” would run into something like this? How many people are running 4 monitors?
Grandma loves sitting in front of her 4 ultrawides while discussing the day with her friendly LLM
I run 6 on 2 gpus and it’s Just Werked TM for a few years now. On a Core2 Duo machine even.
This is stupid. While i am all up advocating for foss, trying to argue peoples usecases into non existence is not helping anyone.
My grandparents ran into problems with Linux because they wanted to connect their TV (second monitor) and use team viewer with it (to control it from their phone.
Some of my super non it friends use lots of monitors because who the hell knows why they need this for office stuff.
Its really bothering me that a part of “Linux die hards” always blames missing features or complicated processes on the user.
“Oh yeah, you want a working system? HERES WHY YOU SHOULDT WANT THAT AND WHY IT IS ACTUALLY A FEATURE THAT ITS NOT WORKING. Noob”
I think we need to accept that Linux is not for anyone.
Sure I can install the aur version of team speak from console, but my grandparents can’t. They can’t even read English documentation.
For people living it Linux is fine, and better than other systems, you can change your desktop envirment, fit it to your needs, not be constantly spied on, change everything you want (if you understand it enough to compile from source) nice.
But if you want anything more than “one monitor, mail, office (with bad grammar and spell check)” but are not comfortable with reading through pages and pages of documentation or spending an amount of time tinkering with your PC others spend with their kids, Linux just won’t work!
And we need to be honest to people with that or we set wrong expectations.
I am not dumb and not a total noob, but I broke my system recently because I wanted to change my username and didn’t read through all the little details why Linux can’t do this like any other os. On any payed os this is one klick, on Linux your documents break (because of groups), your desktop items break, your taskbar breaks (and I still haven’t got the taskbar panel working today, because no matter what the home folder in plasma settings is, panel always interprets ~/ as the old homefolder path, which doesn’t exist anymore and for the love of god I can’t find where panel stores this info), loots of symlinks break and im thinking about just installing from scratch because it is easier than to fix everything.
Linux just isn’t a payed os and you can’t expect everything from it you can from windows or osx. There are (lot of) usecases win and osx easily accomplish, and Linux doesn’t if your not a nerd or have lots of time.
Just saying those usecases are “not needed”. While people clearly need them is only helping Microsoft and apple.
At this point, I’m just so sick of every little thing being a huge struggle
Suffering is inevitable. This is the first noble truth in Buddhism. Troubleshooting Linux is Tao.
It certainly made me think back to my early days of fighting IRQ conflicts in Windows ME. Or trying to get a LAN party going with mixtures of 98, 98 SE, and ME. And getting excited about the troubleshooting. I guess all these years later I’ve just gotten salty.
I remember getting excited to tbs something that didn’t work when learning a new thing. At this point, I’m middle aged (old is what I would have called it then) and bored with spending any time doing anything I don’t want to do. My free time is precious. If it works, great. If not, let’s fix it. At no point am I interested in doing more than I have to.
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“something as simple as RDP” haha hahaha you’re a funny one!
My recent experience with helping a friend with an nvidia card to work on Linux is that I never want to touch an nvidia card again.
Also, please tell me which average user makes its own windows installation. When I was young in the 90s I was paid to install windows in my village.
But yes, much progress is still needed to smooth the installation. The problem is that the hardware is often a fault though, through their shitty drivers.
I’ve certainly had issues with RDP in Windows.
Weird, sucks you had a rough time. I’m mostly perplexed about the network card issue, and the monitors. I haven’t had any trouble like that in more than a decade. I’ve honestly actually had more trouble with a new install of windows failing to detect hardware than Linux recently.
It was a strange one. I had never seen anything like it before. It could still see the hardware, but listed it as unclaimed. Nothing I could do would get it to start working. When I finally decided to reinstall, I figured I’d try a different distro.
You don’t by chance have a formerly-mellonox card as your network card, do you? I wonder if something is checking for the Nvidia vendor string to only start one GPU and the devs forgot that Nvidia doesn’t only make GPUs
I would think that some of these problems with RDP and monitors might be caused by running Wayland with an Nvidia GPU. I’m pretty sure both Ubuntu and Fedora use Wayland out of the box by default. Best off using Xorg until Nvidia sorts their shit.
Dont fall for bait guys
For rdp take a look at remmina
Yep, Remmina is awesome. I wish I had it at work.
For RDP, i use Remmina, no idea if it will do what you want for your weird monitor layout, but it is a well featured RDP client.
I would say that your experience is unusual, even with nvidia. Ive always used nvidia, and its generally been a significantly smoother experience.
I’ve used Remmina for years on Linux when administrating Windows Machines. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single problem with it. Love that program.
I tried Remmina and it wasn’t working either. I couldn’t even get it to connect using the same settings as RDP free.
I’ve never had an issue with Remmina. Did you verify you had a working connection between your device and the server? (Silly question but its good to start at the basics)
Did you try just a basic connection? Or is your target box using Network Level Authentication? (I’ve heard most Linux clients don’t play well with this)