rdesktop is a powerful RDP client for Linux. The inability of switch applications between remote side and local side by hot key makes it a little uncomfortable. Look around the internet, you can find many requests for the feature but no solutions. So I made the patch. It do things like:
Double press Ctrl+Alt+Left or Ctrl+Alt+Right to switch local active workspaces.
Double press Ctrl+Alt+Tab to switch local active window.
Other hot keys are sent directly to remote machine.
If using -fD options and having two or above workspaces, the effect is amazing!
If rdesktop is running in fullscreen mode (-f and without -D), Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right/Tab will toggle it to window mode first. After switching back, it can NOT toggle to fullscreen automatically. Press Ctrl+Alt+Enter to do that. (I know this is boring. But it is the best I can do. Rdesktop use override_redirect to implement fullscreen which makes it always the top-most window no matter which workspace/window you have switched to)
Download and unpack rdesktop.tgz to get a patched executable file: rdesktop. Overwrite /usr/bin/rdesktop with it. That’s all. The file was compiled with all debian/ubuntu official patches and tested in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic). It should work in other Linux distribution too. If it does or does not work in your environment, please leave a comment to report.