Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Is there a Remote Desktop server for Linux?
- Thread starter cpjust
- Start date
see if this leads you anywhere:
X-Win32: Next-Generation PC X Server
Remote Desktop server/client for Linux??
Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
X-Win32: Next-Generation PC X Server
Remote Desktop server/client for Linux??
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/remote-desktop-serverclient-for-linux-25899/
Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
- Thread starter
- #4
I agree that VNC is generally slow unless you're on a LAN.
Check out NX.
Check out NX.
DonQuichote
Programmer
- Nov 9, 2001
- 980
If you install cygwin/x, you can use the "normal" X protocol. This gives you everything useful (the applications) and leaves the unimportant bit (the desktop) out.
+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)
+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)
@cpjust
The premise of your displeasure was not defined. And to hate something just because you have to sound illogical.
Anyway, I've used VNC ever since Win 3.1 days and to me, function precedes form. I use VNC for support & administrative purposes and don't spend more than 20 to 30 minutes per session. Thus "beauty" is secondary in nature unless the nature of the session requires me to view colour accurately, then I just bump up the number of bits per colour. I wished VNC would have grey scale option.
As a matter of fact, an RDP connection to a Win2K server only has a maximum of 8bit colour which causes some applications to have a funky hue or shade. I think Win2K3 is now 16 bits.
--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--
The premise of your displeasure was not defined. And to hate something just because you have to sound illogical.
Anyway, I've used VNC ever since Win 3.1 days and to me, function precedes form. I use VNC for support & administrative purposes and don't spend more than 20 to 30 minutes per session. Thus "beauty" is secondary in nature unless the nature of the session requires me to view colour accurately, then I just bump up the number of bits per colour. I wished VNC would have grey scale option.
As a matter of fact, an RDP connection to a Win2K server only has a maximum of 8bit colour which causes some applications to have a funky hue or shade. I think Win2K3 is now 16 bits.
--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--
- Thread starter
- #9
BadBigBen: I'll check out UltraVNC and see if it works any better than RealVNC.
I can already ssh into my machine at work, but all my work is on my desktop in various states of being edited, so I'd need to see my desktop to continue my work where I left off.DonQuichote said:
Well in my case, it doesn't just look bad, the text is completely unreadable and therefore both the "function" and "beauty" are busted.zeland said:
cpjust said:
Was there ever a question about trying to fix the configuration of VNC that wasn't working well? If VNC was such a piece of crap it wouldn't have a following. Perhaps a couple of tweaks couple improve your experience?
I don't use any particular tool in this thread to help out the configuration angle, but maybe there's a stone left unturned for fixing your VNC?
D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting
DonQuichote
Programmer
- Nov 9, 2001
- 980
So let me try to make things clear: you have three machines.
One is the "target" machine you want to connect to and want to run xrdp on (which may succeed, I got it running on my Linux office desktop PC only and I do not know why).
One is your office PC, the one that can SSH to the target PC.
The "at work" line suggest that you also have a third machine. Say, at home or at a client's location.
I have a similar setup: an office PC (dual boot Windows/Linux), a home PC (Linux), and a virtual machine at a server at work (Linux). Connecting to that virtual machine has some advantages, because it is located at the office (meaning the IP address is known to some secured clients) and it is always on.
Do you mean your work is on the target PC or on the office PC?
If it is on the target PC, you can just access it with the SSH tunnel and with the programs that were started from the tunnelled shell. For instance, I can run my favourite editor (a Windows program) on my virtual machine from Windows at my office machine. This gives me a new window containing that editor and no extra junk. If I click "file open" in that window, it shows me the virtual machine's files, because it is running there. I know it is a bit odd to use both Wine and Cygwin/X to get a remote connection work like it should on Windows. I did write a little script to start up that editor, though. It contains only the wine call to the long, spaced path you have to give to the editor.
So it can naturally use any files on the target machines desktop.
However, if this is only done to connect to your "work files" in different versions, I would strongly suggest you to use a version control system, like subversion, git or bazaar. If you run subversion over https, you can secure it like you would do with any company web application. This also gives you better code-conflict handling when working with more than one person on the same file.
+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)
- Thread starter
- #12
Actually I was talking about 2 machines - my work machine is the target.
At work, I usually have dozens of files open in various locations on my hard drive and over the network to another server, so finding the files though an ssh terminal would be pretty time consuming, especially if I don't remember where they all are. Also, some aren't even saved yet because they're just temporary stuff that I don't need permanently.
I NEED to see my desktop, otherwise I'll just be stumbling around in the dark.
At work, I usually have dozens of files open in various locations on my hard drive and over the network to another server, so finding the files though an ssh terminal would be pretty time consuming, especially if I don't remember where they all are. Also, some aren't even saved yet because they're just temporary stuff that I don't need permanently.
I NEED to see my desktop, otherwise I'll just be stumbling around in the dark.
I've used a couple VNC clients in Linux. One that's simply called "vnc" in Fedora and Mandriva (prolly many other places) defaults to a low visual quality (I would guess 256 colors) so I don't see my remote desktop as crystal clear as it could otherwise be, but text is still readable. Just instead of having a smooth transition between shades of blue on my desktop wallpaper it shows up in blobs of solid hues of blue. But it's only a lower bits-per-pixel, as if computers still supported going into "256 Colors" mode. You'd still be able to read text fine, things don't get distorted like jpegs, they just have limited color palettes.
I've also used TightVNC for Linux (which came default in Mandriva). TightVNC seems to default to at least 16bpp (probably higher) so my remote desktop came in perfectly clear. On the downside, it was only fast when I was inside the local LAN. Remotely, the time it took to draw the display from top to bottom was just terribly slow. I tried messing with the command-line options for TightVNC. There are some to drop the bits per pixel, some to manipulate the jpeg quality (I tried it with the jpeg quality down to like 4 out of 10, and there WAS visual distortion of the image, so I could definitely see text being literally unreadable when you lower the jpeg compression quality). So there's a difference between bits-per-pixel and jpeg quality. Lowering the BPP shouldn't distort anything but lowering the quality would.
I ended up uninstalling TightVNC on my Mandriva and went with the simpler "vnc" one, since I use VNC when I'm away from home more often anyway and I don't wanna have to deal with TightVNC's default setting of trying to get the maximum quality display.
The point is, if your VNC client isn't satisfactory, look at its manual and see what options there are for it (i.e. "man vncviewer"). I'm sure it'll have some options to tweak the bpp and quality and compression algorithm and a couple other things so you can find a good balance between quality and network speed. And if your VNC client doesn't cooperate, try another VNC client.
-------------
Cuvou.com | My personal homepage
I've also used TightVNC for Linux (which came default in Mandriva). TightVNC seems to default to at least 16bpp (probably higher) so my remote desktop came in perfectly clear. On the downside, it was only fast when I was inside the local LAN. Remotely, the time it took to draw the display from top to bottom was just terribly slow. I tried messing with the command-line options for TightVNC. There are some to drop the bits per pixel, some to manipulate the jpeg quality (I tried it with the jpeg quality down to like 4 out of 10, and there WAS visual distortion of the image, so I could definitely see text being literally unreadable when you lower the jpeg compression quality). So there's a difference between bits-per-pixel and jpeg quality. Lowering the BPP shouldn't distort anything but lowering the quality would.
I ended up uninstalling TightVNC on my Mandriva and went with the simpler "vnc" one, since I use VNC when I'm away from home more often anyway and I don't wanna have to deal with TightVNC's default setting of trying to get the maximum quality display.
The point is, if your VNC client isn't satisfactory, look at its manual and see what options there are for it (i.e. "man vncviewer"). I'm sure it'll have some options to tweak the bpp and quality and compression algorithm and a couple other things so you can find a good balance between quality and network speed. And if your VNC client doesn't cooperate, try another VNC client.
-------------
Cuvou.com | My personal homepage
Code:
perl -e '$|=$i=1;print" oo\n<|>\n_|_";x:sleep$|;print"\b",$i++%2?"/":"_";goto x;'- Thread starter
- #14
Yeah, I'm wondering if it might be the VNC server that's the problem, rather than the RealVNC client I have at home. I tried looking for configuration options at work, but the only options available (at least in the config GUI) were for setting a password and things like that.
I used VNC to connect to other Windows machines before, and it was still pretty bad, but at least I could read the text... But it's free, so I guess you get what you pay for. ;-)
I used VNC to connect to other Windows machines before, and it was still pretty bad, but at least I could read the text... But it's free, so I guess you get what you pay for. ;-)
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question