Newbie here.......second post.

I'm starting to use my Windows 11 desktop to connect to an older HP laptop running POP-OS, using Windows Remote Desktop as client, and xrdp on the POP-OS laptop. The connection is working well, except it is slower than I would like, and when I attempt to slide the POP-OS terminal window there is some hesitation and jerky movement. The laptop has 100 MB/sec Ethernet, which I think is the cause of the slow transfer of info between the 2 computers. Both computers are using wired connections to my home network.

I thought that I might be able to get a faster connection from the laptop by using an USB-to-Ethernet dongle. The laptop appears to have USB 2.0, and I'm not sure if that has enough speed to handle the transfers between the 2 computers.

Need some advice please......Is the USB-to-Ethenet dongle a good idea? Will that solve the hesitation and jerky movements? Or, should I consider another approach? My knowledge is pretty rudimentary and I certainly appreciate all comments and suggestions about how to proceed. Thank you.

The *ABSOLUTE FASTEST* you can do over USB2.0 to Ethernet is 480MB/s, and that's the absolute best-case scenario. That said, if all you're doing is remote desktop...why are you bothering??? Linux can be managed/run easily over SSH without doing an entire desktop; that's a Windows mentality. There are many articles here about X forwarding over SSH, so you can run a GUI program on Linux via SSH without shoveling over an entire X environment.

Past that, if you have a fairly new Windows 11 PC, you can load Linux in VirtualBox very easily, and have it all on one machine. Any machine that's limited to built-in 100MB/s ethernet as standard is old enough to be junked.

Is this connection across a switch or hub? Can you connect directly?

Fast Ethernet signal is 100 Mb/s but the actual TCP/IP bandwidth is ~94 Mb/s. What RDP client and what RDP settings are you using?

I use RDP to connect to a remote Windows desktop and due to asynchronous internet speeds my bandwidth is only about 10-12 Mb/s. How much bandwidth depends on what you are actually doing since the more the desktop changes the more bandwidth is used. So I see a bit of a lag when moving windows around but not so much when actually using a typical office type application. The remote desktop computer is an Intel I3 so fairly old.

There are a few factors that might determine speed like what else is running on the laptop, remote desktop resolution, desktop background etc and of course a really old computer. At the moment I do not see 100 Mb/s as being to slow. If your network is 1GB then a USB 1GB Ethernet adapter would give you more bandwidth at least double but may not help.