There's a second crucial element to this: can it lock the local screen while you do this?

I did this a whole lot in the lab with Windows - walk away, and log in remotely and monitor my session, then head back in and log back on locally.

I never found a way to do this with Linux that just restores the session the way Windows seems able to. Instead all I ever found was "the remote screen is unlocked and the cursor is moving" or whatever.

AFAIK the only way is to always run a remote X server (i.e. Xvnc) and always connect to it, even when sitting at the local computer.

Maybe you could do something with dpms but that leaves the keyboard active still.

Yeah see this has always been where I think Windows dominates Linux.

Going from local to RDP to local feels seamless and secure. I wish we could get that experience on Linux.

Does GNOME's new RDP server get us any closer to this dream?

Yes. A wprs session is persistent on the server (currently a single session per user, we're going to support multiple sessions for a user when we get to it), so you can connect/reconnect from different client computers.

If you start the application in a local wprsc connecting to a local wprsd instead of in the local compositor directly, you can later connect to the session with a remote wprsc.

Locking the screen (the other subthread in here) is not applicable to this, applications are drawn wherever the wprsc is running and only one wprsc can be connected at a time.