Question: Which remote desktop solution for these specific needs?
by haertig from LinuxQuestions.org on (#595F5)
I am looking for remote desktop suggestions specific to my situation.
I often times have longterm guests who come to visit and take over my normal computer room - it's a combination of office and guest bedroom. When they are visiting I need access to my main desktop computer. SSH is fine and is what I use most of the time. But for email, some web and a few other applications I need remote GUI.
Currently I use an ancient laptop as my client end, very slow, and run sshfs to mount remote directories, and ssh -X for X11 forwarding of GUI applications. X forwarding works for the GUI, but is slow as a dog. I don't strictly need to remotely access the entire desktop, but that's probably faster than X forwarding individual windows anyway. In other situations I have used VNC, NoMachine NX/FreeNX, and RDP.
My needs are:
(1) Only need LAN access, no WAN access required, do not want any outside 3rd party servers involved
(2) No encryption or fancy authentication required
(3) Always one-to-one connection, no multiple connections needed
(4) Near realtime screen updates, minimal lag
(5) No file transfer, chatting, or any of those "extra features" needed
(6) Client end will probably have smaller screen resolution than server end, so need solid performance and ease of use in scrolling, or high quality scaling (in the past I have hated scaling - looks ugly and kludgy)
(7) Client end should run well on minimal hardware, ideally an old laptop or maybe a Raspberry Pi based setup
[edit]
(8) Would prefer remote desktop to access currently logged in user screen on server, not start up a separate user session.
[/edit]
In the past (other situations) I have used NoMachine (Linux client, Windows server) and that actually worked well. Back in those days NoMachine used peer-to-peer connections. But I think more recent versions depend on 3rd party servers which is a show stopper for me. I need to investigate this further.
VNC is probably going to be the answer, we'll see. But which flavor of VNC? I have not been happy with VNC when trying to display a higher resolution server screen on a smaller resolution client, although some flavors are better than others in this regard. However, this is not a show stopper - I can always attach a second monitor of high enough resolution to the client laptop (or directly, if running on a Raspberry Pi). I would prefer to run the client on a lower resolution old, cheap laptop, - to prevent having to purchase any more hardware - but I don't have to. Having encryption is not a show stopper either. While I don't need it, and expect things would run faster without it, I realize that most solutions are going to have it whether I want it or not.
I have limited (and stale) experience using RDP. It works well Windows-to-Windows, but I'm Linux-to-Linux and RDP just sounds like a kludge in my situation. But maybe not.
Thanks in advance for any pointers, suggestions, and experience with remote desktop solutions that might work for me!
I often times have longterm guests who come to visit and take over my normal computer room - it's a combination of office and guest bedroom. When they are visiting I need access to my main desktop computer. SSH is fine and is what I use most of the time. But for email, some web and a few other applications I need remote GUI.
Currently I use an ancient laptop as my client end, very slow, and run sshfs to mount remote directories, and ssh -X for X11 forwarding of GUI applications. X forwarding works for the GUI, but is slow as a dog. I don't strictly need to remotely access the entire desktop, but that's probably faster than X forwarding individual windows anyway. In other situations I have used VNC, NoMachine NX/FreeNX, and RDP.
My needs are:
(1) Only need LAN access, no WAN access required, do not want any outside 3rd party servers involved
(2) No encryption or fancy authentication required
(3) Always one-to-one connection, no multiple connections needed
(4) Near realtime screen updates, minimal lag
(5) No file transfer, chatting, or any of those "extra features" needed
(6) Client end will probably have smaller screen resolution than server end, so need solid performance and ease of use in scrolling, or high quality scaling (in the past I have hated scaling - looks ugly and kludgy)
(7) Client end should run well on minimal hardware, ideally an old laptop or maybe a Raspberry Pi based setup
[edit]
(8) Would prefer remote desktop to access currently logged in user screen on server, not start up a separate user session.
[/edit]
In the past (other situations) I have used NoMachine (Linux client, Windows server) and that actually worked well. Back in those days NoMachine used peer-to-peer connections. But I think more recent versions depend on 3rd party servers which is a show stopper for me. I need to investigate this further.
VNC is probably going to be the answer, we'll see. But which flavor of VNC? I have not been happy with VNC when trying to display a higher resolution server screen on a smaller resolution client, although some flavors are better than others in this regard. However, this is not a show stopper - I can always attach a second monitor of high enough resolution to the client laptop (or directly, if running on a Raspberry Pi). I would prefer to run the client on a lower resolution old, cheap laptop, - to prevent having to purchase any more hardware - but I don't have to. Having encryption is not a show stopper either. While I don't need it, and expect things would run faster without it, I realize that most solutions are going to have it whether I want it or not.
I have limited (and stale) experience using RDP. It works well Windows-to-Windows, but I'm Linux-to-Linux and RDP just sounds like a kludge in my situation. But maybe not.
Thanks in advance for any pointers, suggestions, and experience with remote desktop solutions that might work for me!