[AuckLUG] Remote desktop on linux

[Karl.]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 01:31:54PM +1200, Daniel Mason wrote:
> Is there a similar thing on Linux as windows. like remote desktop??

Firstly, you're missing out on a lot of potential responses by posting 
to AuckLUG and not NZLUG.  Anyway...

The most similar option to windows is potentially:
http://xrdp.sourceforge.net/
I've not tried it yet, but according to the website: "The goal of this 
project is to provide a fully functional Linux terminal server, capable 
of accepting connections from rdesktop and Microsoft's own terminal 
server / remote desktop clients."

It's available in Debian (Testing) as well, which makes it pretty easy 
to play with on a Debian system.


Another option, which is potentially a lot more work, is to use FreeNX
http://freenx.berlios.de/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX

from the first website listed: "NX is an exciting new technology for 
remote display.  It provides near local speed application responsiveness 
over high latency, low bandwidth links. The core libraries for NX are 
provided by NoMachine under the GPL. FreeNX is a GPL implementation of 
the NX Server."

It is possible to use a FreeNX remote desktop over dial-up - it's going 
to be slow, but purportedly better than VNC or RDP.  It also has ability 
to proxy VNC or RDP to make them faster (needs to be proxying at the 
machine that you are viewing, of course, rather than magically speeding 
up connections after the data has already been through the skinny pipe).  

There are debs for installing FreeNX v0.6 in Debian - I have 
successfully installed it.  There are also rpm's and suchlike, but I 
have no experience of them.  If you screw up the install, then the error 
messages are not easy to decipher.  There is a mailing list with an 
active & helpful developer answering questions.


Karl.
-- 
http://mowson.org/karl