I find X2Go to be a very nice Linux remote desktop solution, more or less on par with MS-RDP on Windows. The only thing I couldn't get to work was continuing a local session remotely (disconnecting and later reconnecting to a remote session works fine). It is packaged in most mainline distributions.
That's surprising. I tried X2Go a couple of times on multiple machines (always logging in from Windows to Unbuntu 18.04 if that matters, on a local network) and it was horrible. At least a crash a day, couldn't get numeric keypad keys to work, slow. Not sure if I did anything wrong or just had bad luck.. And those are just the basic features. To get on par with RDP it should also do multiple screens properly (i.e. not one big screen, it's not 2000 anymore), drive/audio/... sharing and so on. But I never got to trying that, went back to VNC. Which also has problems but at least it allows me to do work.
Unfortunately the OP is about right (in my experience, for the things I do): if the connection allows it remote desktop should really be like you're sitting in front of the physical machine. RDP does that for me, on the same level SSH/Mosh does that for terminal stuff. I'm not sure what is so hard to get right to also get something equivalent on Linux, so maybe it's really the lack of interest?
I have been using Linux-to-Linux; multiple monitors work without problems, with respect to docking to edges etc. I use it as a a graphical terminal when I work from home, i.e. I sit in front of my machine at home, but everything happens on the machine at work. Laptop screen with 1440x900 resolution does not feel sluggish on effectively 40 Mbps wireless network, desktop screen with 3840x2160 works fine over 75 Mbps residential broadband. I can have voice chats over that link too. Electron apps are redraw hogs though; they feel a little bit sluggish at 4K. I would rather use 2560x1440 then. Emacs is fine in either.
I've done a lot of work through x2go, also windows machine connecting to ubuntu. And I've almost exclusively used seamless windows which makes superior multi-screen (and single screen) UX as window management is just native windows.
Well, I guess it depends on the use case etc. but I find seamless windows to be the holy grail for most of my work. And the ability to resume an entire session is great!
Didn't have that many crashes, maybe once a month or something, still a bit frustrating but not enough to scare me away. But yeah, maybe I was lucky, didn't get the most reliable impression of it but it did still do wonders for me.
Not surprising to me, I've been using x2go for many years now and have hardly ever had it crash - I can't remember the last time but it is sure to have happened... I guess. I'm using it both within a LAN as well as over a VPN between countries. I'd say x2go make true on the promise of network-transparency which X11 gives in theory but which is hard to use in practice.
