[Klug-general] openssh or what?

George Prowse george.prowse at gmail.com
Wed Feb 15 12:18:37 UTC 2012


On 15/02/2012 11:15, Michael E. Rentell wrote:
> I have recently contracted something nasty which prevents my sitting
> comfortably at my primary PC. I have to use a limited-spec laptop over
> the domestic wi-fi network for emailing etc and staying in touch. My
> domestic network consists of two well-specced PCs called 'mainframe' and
> 'backup' connected together via an Ethernet cable, plus 'laptop'
> connected via the wi-fi facility on the router. 'Backup' has shared
> files via samba etc so that the entire content of 'mainframe' can be
> dumped to it. 'Laptop' can also see those shared backup files. That
> seems to work.
>
> What I want to do now is use 'mainframe' with its extended facilities,
> including VirtualBox, but from 'laptop'. I am pretty sure this is
> possible under Linux. 'Mainframe' has the latest Ubuntu with Unity,
> 'backup' has up-to-date PCLinuxOS and 'laptop' is running LXDE although
> I'm not sure whose. Currently the only shared facility is cups which
> works fine using 'mainframe' as the printer server. That more or less
> installed itself.
>
> Can someone kindly point me at an idiots guide where I can read up on
> how to achieve what I want to do. I've read the wikipedia article on
> openssh and that seems to be the way to go although do I need all that
> encryption when I am sheltered behind a router which is a pretty good
> firewall? There are no problems with internal security as I'm the only
> user in the house and the wi-fi link is encrypted with WPA-PSK.
>
> It would be nice to sit here in my armchair with my laptop just feeding
> the keyboard and mouse clicks to 'mainframe' and seeing that PC's screen
> on my laptop. I'm happy to do a lot of reading but I don't want to
> re-invent the wheel neither do I want to over-complicate things with
> lots of encryption if that isn't necessary.
>
> Er when I said 'idiots guide' I meant it :-[ . Many thanks in advice.
>
> MikeR

There are loads of desktop sharing programs out there and most work on 
OSX, Linux, Windows, Android and iOS. Ubuntu/Gnome comes with one out of 
the box called simply "Desktop Sharing", Windows comes with "Remote 
Desktop" and OSX comes with "Remote Desktop Connection".

Here is a review of 7:
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/7-of-the-best-linux-remote-desktop-clients-716346

A search on google for "linux remote desktop" turns up more than I can 
explain. I've only used it on my android phone but all the major OSs (as 
long as you have Gnome or KDE on linux) come with support out of the box

George



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