[HLUG] Linux and Remote PC VNC Software

[Julian Robbins]

Meijin wrote:
> Morning Folks.
>
> Just wondered if you have experience of remote PC support using Linux.
>
> If so, I presume you use some sort of VNC software ? Any 
> recommendations ? Any particularly well suited to cross-platform 
> support ? (i.e. Linux to Windows, etc)
Hi Meijin

I've remotely controlled my win pc and my work pc from home quite a bit.

Linux works really well with VNC, although there are several VNC 
variants now. Real VNC and Tight VNC are worth looking at. Tight VNC 
uses some special compression to minimise the amount of data transmitted 
and recd over the link.

In terms of VNC clients, Gnome and KDE have at least one built in. ie 
Gnome has Remote Desktop Viewer, which acts as a VNC client. The older 
Terminal Server Client, uses rdesktop an app that can work with Windows 
RDP protocols.

My favourite is NX though. www.nomachine.com. It uses open source 
technologies, but the packages are not fully open source themselves, but 
for 1-5 users are 'free'. NX offers the best performance over a line bar 
none, and you can even connect to RDP or VNC sessions too to speed them 
up. Think of it as a bit like a proxy server.

There is a FreeNX open source server/client, but I heard its not being 
maintained particularly well at the moment.

Basically, there are tools a plenty, and servers/clients for just about 
every situation with Linux and connecting to Windows and Macs, etc.

Julian

>
> Cheers
>
> Rob