Remote desktop vs. remote display
Remote desktop vs. remote display
Posted Feb 14, 2013 22:04 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by dskoll
Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland
On Debian, pt-get install x11vnc and then read the man page. It does exactly what you want.
No, it does not. I can't even understand how can you ever suggest such nonsense as an answer to the message which includes the following: Both work perfectly in Windows, both are horrible in Linux - and the solutions offered usually don't use the much vaunted "X network transparency" at all. I know some Linux distributions offer VNC as a solution, but it's not perfect: when I access programs in such a way my desktop in office is actually becoming unlocked and anyone can do anything with it!
Yes, I know about x11vnc - and that's exactly my point. We have this nice super-duped-network-transparent GUI system which obviously should be good for remoting, but when it's faced with real-world task (the most popular real world task by far!) it FAILS. Utterly and completely. The only solution offered is a kludge used by such systems as MacOS or Android (which shun the remote access in principle as "not important") or "every program should implement it explicitly" solution. Nothing even remotely close to what that "awful" Windows offers.
Posted Feb 15, 2013 20:17 UTC (Fri)
by Serge (guest, #84957)
[Link] (2 responses)
What's the problem with x11vnc? You mentioned two use-cases: share desktop with someone else and connect from home to office. So x11vnc exactly solves first case and can be easily used in another one.
And no, having an unlocked screen is not a problem, since nobody can do anything there anyway because you'll see that (you can turn your monitor off if you're afraid of someone to see something). Even more, it's an advantage, since while talking to someone in your office you can say "Let me show you, come to my desktop... Look, I open this program, do this, click here and check this..."
> We have this nice super-duped-network-transparent GUI system which obviously should be good for remoting, but when it's faced with real-world task (the most popular real world task by far!) it FAILS.
It's not. This "nice super-duped-network-transparent GUI system" is what allows you to do that, and do it instantly, without any preparations, without patching X.Org or rebuilding weston from experimental git branch.
For me the most common case of remote desktop is: I'm home, I have not started VNC server since I did not planned to connect to office, but now I need it. So I SSH into my office machine, start x11vnc, do the job, lock screen and leave. Simple, no preparations, no firewall configurations, I don't even need admin rights to do that.
Posted Feb 16, 2013 3:42 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
And even then, x11vnc _STILL_ doesn't solve all problems.
Posted Feb 16, 2013 11:35 UTC (Sat)
by Serge (guest, #84957)
[Link]
But even if it's not, so what? The statement was like "X does not allow that", and that statement is wrong, X allows that, x11vnc is an example.
When you need to run a single program remotely and see its window you can use x11vnc too (it can forward separate windows), but there're better solutions to that, like ssh -X (ssh -Y) or xpra/winswitch.org.
I don't understand all the fuzz about "network transparency". You either can do something or you can't. It does not matter what words you use to call that.
> And even then, x11vnc _STILL_ doesn't solve all problems.
Of course it does not solve ALL the problems. But it solves those two, the most common ones. :)
Remote desktop vs. remote display
Remote desktop vs. remote display
Remote desktop vs. remote display