Best Presentation of XenDesktop 4 on Windows

XenDesktop 4 has raised the bar for virtual desktop (VDI) solutions. It’s now easier to provide a virtual desktop to users on differing operation systems and platforms. And having Citrix on the iPhone / iPad is just amazing eye candy too.

By default, all the tutorials for installing XenDesktop use the defaults. This means that under Windows, using a browser to connect and launch a session from web interface uses the online plug-in module. It works, provides multi-monitor capability, but has display artifacts and no nifty bar to manage USB connection and such. Besides this client, the Desktop Viewer can also be used as the default (if installed).

With the 11.x and 12.0 clients it’s easy to change. First install the Citrix Online plug-in (not the Citrix Online plugin – web which is smaller and doesn’t include the Desktop client) from here. You’ll have to navigate to the OS X client, Citrix seems to change the URL for the downloads.

From the web interface server that services XenDesktop, browse to the conf directory and edit webinterface.conf. For example, /Citrix/WebDesktop2 is located here:

Edit the file and search for ShowDesktopViewer and change the line from:

# ShowDesktopViewer=Off

to the following:

ShowDesktopViewer=On

Next time a session is launched, the Desktop Viewer will be used instead of the online plugin. This doesn’t work under OS X as there really isn’t a better client than Desktop Viewer yet. Thanks to Richard Parmiter for documenting this!

Hint: To get mult-monitor under Desktop Viewer, re-size to something less than full screen, move the window over the two monitors and re-size to full screen. This setting will persist across sessions.