For years I used TeamViewer off and on, to help others make the most of their computer experience. But if you want to use it for more than a few users, its commercial version is a big step up in cost. And so, I went looking for a better alternative: I found one in RustDesk, an open source tool similar to TeamViewer, but free to use. And as a tech savvy user I can make it self-hosted, so the data is always confined to computers that are in my sphere of influence. No unknown server somewhere out there which is eaves-dropping on the information.
It runs on almost all systems, I've personally used it on Windows, several Linux distros, and even the Raspberry Pi Desktop OS. It doesn't matter whether the computer in question enables or disables its VPN, RustDesk will always find it and restore the connection. It can be set up to connect to your own computers without having to first give permission, but when connecting to others you may want to make sure to set it so the user still needs to allow the connection after you've requested access.
Rustdesk is the hard work of about 360 developers on GitHub, is actively being maintained, in the spirit of the open source movement.
