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Try TightVNC. It uses better compression and, in my experience, is a whole lot easier to work with than normal VNC.

First of all thank you for mentioning p800.info in your news-article. The fact that thousands and thousands were downloading the screenshots and were visiting the mentioned sites, the server was under heavy load and could not serve all request.

To the topic: putty for the P800 is useless due to the fact that special characters like CTRL and ESC can't be used. Mocha Telnet is a fully functional Telnet/SSH-Client. Unfortunately not freeware.

A tip for the use of VNC under Windows 2000/XP: Use the Tight-VNC-server and open the properties dialog of the programfile WinVNC.exe and choose the "Compatibility" tab. Check "Use 256 colors", "Execute with a resolution of 640x480" and "Disable visual designs" (or however those are called in the English Windows version). This makes it much faster. Don't use it over GPRS or you'll damn the day you get the next phone bill...

Regards

Jean-Pierre Bergamin
http://www.p800.info

You can do this already. As others have said, you can just use tightvnc/vnc or NoMachine.

You can also detach individual windows by using a pseudoserver such as Xmove, though it doesn't support applications that use X extensions (most gtk+ apps won't work).

The downside to using any of these programs for user switching is that you loose any sort of acceleration, XRender or glx/opengl wise.

This line:

The whole thing cost them £400 in software.

should have read:

The whole thing cost them £400 in

Obviuosly. Just to clarify, that got us a cheap box with an AMB Duron 800, 512MB ram, 2x80GB hard disk, 3xRTL-8139 network cards, PCI 128 sound card (sound cards are useful in servers, particularly when you don't normally have a monitor attached - for £15 for the card and some speakers you can program the thing to literally speak to you whenever there's a problem - handy and easily done with Linux).

We also had a problem at Moor Park with kids wasting vast amounts of printer paper and ink all over school. I wanted to use LPRng and Samba to make every workstation print to printers via that server, and that way we could use printer accounting to track/limit what individual kids could print out, and/or bollock them or charge them when they print too much. Unfortunately after discussions with the headteacher I still had to spend every break and lunchtime standing in a library telling kids to take their coats off - in addition to taking my own breaks and lunches.

If your network is well isolated from the Internet (i.e. no-one can initiate a TCP/IP connection from outside), and security isn't your main concern, get yourself a copy of TightVNC (I used 1.2.6, which worked fine for me), and install it on a few workstations. By making a few changes, you can then make the TightVNC server run completely silently in the background (provided you disabled Task Manager for kids, and they can't get a process listing any other way). A few extremely rushed notes from my manual on how to do this:

As local administrator:

• Find the TightVNC installation folder on the server. Run the installation executable file.
• Once installed, right click on start - open all users. Go into programs, find the tightvnc folder, and click cut.
• Right click on start again, click open users, go into programs, and click paste.
• - this stops anyone else getting to it easily.
• go to start - progs - tightvnc, and launch the server.
• go to start - run - regedit
• find hklm\software\orl\winvnc3
• Create: DWORD EnableURLParams = 1 Makes it possible to pass parameters to the embedded webserver
• Create: DWORD DisableTrayIcon = 1 Gets rid of the tray icon.
• Go to start ... administration - install default registry
• go to start ... adminiostration - show default settings
• set the password, and press ok.
• go to start - ad ministrat - install vnc service.
• restart the computer, and log in.

Now you can call up the desktop of any workstation in school by running vncviewer and typing in the machine name of the computer you wish to view. By giving computers sensible names corresponding to their location around school (such as librarydesk1, room21row2col3, food, room18, etc), you can suddenly call up any kid's desktop and see what they're up to. Serious privacy and security concerns, but very useful when weighed up against having to run around the place like a headless chicken all the time because someone else doesn't know what the cAPS lOCK does yet!

If you're running Apache, you can then write a CGI script that gives you a map of all the workstations in the school (formatted, for example, as HTML tables). For each computer on your map, make it link to:

http://10.67.24.116:5800/?password=p5a2s78s243w2 d

- and then you have a clickable map which will bring up the display of any workstation in school in any java enabled web browser. But that's almost completely unsecure, so the risk is your own. Make sure you pick an extremely hard password and that said webpage isn't accessible by kids. Make sure also that no-one can see the password in the URL as they look over your shoulder.

Just to reiterate, that's nothing more than a fun but messy unsecure hack. Don't do this unless at least 50% of your kids have learning/behaviour difficulties...

--

Andrew

Oh, and I do the server management from a Linux system.

Maybe the purists will still hate the idea of 2K underneath, but this is essentially encirclement, demonstrating to management the benefits of Open Source before they make the big leap. Perl and Bash certainly beat WindowsScriptingHell.

Have you tried one of the VNC alternatives? Take a look at Tight VNC. There are others... even some implemented in Java. Take a look at Workspot In particular, try out the demo to see what the performance is like on your net connection.

Have you ever heard of TightVNC? It's using the VNC code base but it'd enhanced in various ways. There is a list of features that differ from VNC here (at the bottom). And when you use the actual client and not the browser version it's extremely smooth. Low bandwidth too.

Have you ever heard of TightVNC? It's using the VNC code base but it'd enhanced in various ways. There is a list of features that differ from VNC here (at the bottom). And when you use the actual client and not the browser version it's extremely smooth. Low bandwidth too.

And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question.

Doesn't that same logic rule out Linux as well?

I would think that VNC or a variation of it running on Linux would solve the problem nicely with the support of multiple virtual desktop running on a single machine.

http://www.realvnc.com
http://www.tightvnc.com

Lord I'm an idiot...too many stupid forums lately....slashdot does html Xibby...duuuuuh! Use preview Xibby...duhhhh!

Tight VNC

Open SSH for Windows

/jeorgen

/jeorgen

It works fine; 0 complaints from me.

Considering how much space winshit takes up, and the innability for specialised projects to modify it you are faced with a serious challenge.

If I had to do it, I would install Linux on the tablet pc with an svgalib client for VNC or terminal server. It will enforce "on premisis" use. VNC supports SSL if you need security.

Make sure to use every available security option and see if you can get modified 802.11a cards "shifted" to another frequency. It won't be perfect, but it will be more effective than WEP.

there's a greater chance he'll get laid by Ellen Fiess than he'll need to run an XWindows program remotely.

I'd have to agree that VNC isn't exactly good on dialup connections or even ISDN.

However, this is what tightvnc is for. Regular VNC works very well in a LAN though, and works quite well from every broadband connection I've used.

For comparison, also check out TightVNC. TightVNC makes a remote graphical desktop quite usable over DSL speeds.

It sounds like the main VNC branch has now added a tight-like encoding (ZRLE) which may obviate the need for TightVNC, but TightVNC has some additional niceties like automatic tunneling over SSH.

I love vnc, with a passion. I also love Tightvnc, and all its varients. VNC is the one thing that makes me feel safe when I leave my computer because I know it's a broadband connection away.

Even at work!

Also, in case it wasn't clear, Microsoft is promoting remote control software, but their own remote control software, not VNC. If you read the Windows 2000/XP EULA, you'll see that it's against the EULA to use VNC from a Linux box to a Windows box:

Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.

TightVNC is a much better choice. It offers compression, and is much faster.

If you're concerned about security, then don't open the VNC ports up to the Internet. Install cygwin, install openssh, run it as a service, and ssh to the windows box and tunnel the VNC ports through ssh.

Make it TightVNC, so you'll have compression on the datastream.

what about a solution like tightvnc (or one of its cousins) for remote stuff then? it does most (not all mind you) of what x does w/o all the crud that x brings w/ it, and it is very platform independent and w/ ssh you can make it very secure.

A Groupwise client, a Novell client, a pcAnywhere type thing to check on remote systems which cannot be replaced by Linux because of the apps that must run on them... ?

You mean like this, this (or this), and this?

Windows uses the much smarter RDP protocol for thin-clients. RDP is hooked into the GDI at a low level, and transfers only the minimum information required to clients. Clients can cache images, and expose their local files and devices to the server. There are clients available for every platform imaginable.

The new Mira technology is basically a dumbed-down version of the professional thin-client stuff for home users. Some friends already have similar networks running at home, and I've experimented too. It's amazing to access your full desktop from any computer, anywhere, anytime. Over ADSL it's fast enough to do most typical office tasks like reading email or writing documents.

The Windows XP "Remote Assistance" tool uses RDP, so it can give you an idea of what Mira will be like.

I've used VNC, and I find it pokey when Windows is serving. It is quite fast, however, when Linux is serving. TightVNC is faster still. And then there is X, which trumps everything in terms of speed, but doesn't serve from Windows AFAIK.

I would have no problem checking email, editing documents etc... using any of these when Linux is serving.

you might try something like TightVNC (www.tightvnc.com) with the remote keyboards locked so you're the only one driving the presentation. We've used this at my company to train doctors on our web-based medical systems and it works pretty well for us.

1) AT&T Labs has not released a significant version of VNC for a little while now, yet VNC development continues on many fronts. These efforts will therefore not cease just because the AT&T Lab goes away. Examples of non-AT&T projects involving VNC:

ChromiVNC (MacOS 7.5/9.x server) - maintained by myself, Jonathan Morton.

VNCThing (MacOS Carbon viewer) - maintained by Dair Grant.

OSXVNC (MacOS X server)

TightVNC (ultra-efficient Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Constantin Kaplinsky.

TridiaVNC (semi-commercial Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Tridia Corporation.

A large number of independent viewers, as well as a few servers, for minority and hand-held platforms are also available.

Each of the above is independent of the AT&T Labs, although most use at least some of the AT&T code.

2) Most people who use VNC seriously, use the independent versions because they are noticeably further advanced than the AT&T versions. In fact, generally progress on the AT&T versions has been limited to occasional bugfixes for some years.

3) Support for most versions of VNC (but not normally TridiaVNC, for which commercial support from Tridia is available) is primarily conducted on a central mailing list, currently operated from an AT&T server. The posting rate from AT&T representatives or developers is very low. As a group, VNC developers are currently discussing where to move the support list to ensure it's continued operation.

This is all made possible by the GPL.

1. Closing AT&T Labs UK would not change much in the VNC status. The "official" VNC was unsupported for years, and currently it lacks important features available in the derived products. Today, there is no much sense to use the official VNC distribution at all. For example, TightVNC is much more advanced in many aspects.
2. The development on the VNC code base was never stopped. Many people issued various ports and additions, and currently there is at least two major projects maintaining VNC-derived code bases: TightVNC and TridiaVNC. TightVNC is free, TridiaVNC includes both free and commercial versions.
3. Being the maintainer of TightVNC, I can say that the code base is in the state of active development, the latest version was released on March 24, 2002, and the next version is to be released in May. And I have no plans to stop the development.
4. The TightVNC project is open to contributors, so I don't see a reason to create another branch from the "official" VNC sources.

1. Closing AT&T Labs UK would not change much in the VNC status. The "official" VNC was unsupported for years, and currently it lacks important features available in the derived products. Today, there is no much sense to use the official VNC distribution at all. For example, TightVNC is much more advanced in many aspects.
2. The development on the VNC code base was never stopped. Many people issued various ports and additions, and currently there is at least two major projects maintaining VNC-derived code bases: TightVNC and TridiaVNC. TightVNC is free, TridiaVNC includes both free and commercial versions.
3. Being the maintainer of TightVNC, I can say that the code base is in the state of active development, the latest version was released on March 24, 2002, and the next version is to be released in May. And I have no plans to stop the development.
4. The TightVNC project is open to contributors, so I don't see a reason to create another branch from the "official" VNC sources.

Its already happening at http://www.tightvnc.com

www.tightvnc.com
You just have to look.

TightVNC adds variable JPG compression and is optimized for slow connections.

TridiaVNC includes TightVNC.

If you go to the viewer and click on Options, you'll see it as the first option. It includes (in TridiaVNC 1.5.4 anyway) TightVNC 1.2.2 (which is the latest TightVNC anyway). TightVNC was based off of TridiaVNC, so I guess they're using each of the other's sources.

I prefer TridiaVNC. TridiaVNC Pro is good as well. It includes TridiaVNC, but adds in other features such as authenticating off of an NT domain and such. Good for those M$ users out there.

I personally use TridiaVNC on my NT and SuSE Linux boxes. Works great for me!

Well, due to the lack of other informed comments, I'll say my piece.

It's quite ironic that I read slashdot now, while I'm connected through my Personable.com desktop. It gives you a free Windows 2000 desktop which you can connect to either via the Citrix client, or the M$ RDP client (java version of the previous available on their site). They charge about $30/month for access to applications like Office XP, and $1 for every 10M of storage space you use. (Of course, you could install AbiWord for free if you are smart about it.)

A rather nice service if the price doesn't bother you.

The other option is to host your own. You could install VNC on just about any machine. TightVNC does far better compression & uses less CPU power, so check it out first.

VNC on a Windows machine gives you only one remote desktop, and it is a security risk if the box doesn't have complete physical security. Under Unix, VNC works just like Terminal services. Providing as many virtual desktops as you can use.

If you consider using Windows 2000 Server with Terminal services, you need to be aware of the licensing issues. You can always log-in as an administrator and never have any issues. However I don't need to mention that that is a bad idea. If you wish to remotely log-in as a user, you can do so for ~120 days before it locks you out and wants you to get a license for the Terminal services. Registering Terminal Services is a lot like registering XP. Phone calls, or internet, but it's not something you can get around.

I hope that was useful.

Kickstart

The Linux Terminal Server Project is exactly what you're talking about. I've been using it at home here to play around with for a few months now. It's really slick. I have a bunch of my old computers that would otherwise be in the dumpster that are right now serving as terminals. And they're pretty fast, since all the apps run on my big Athlon box.

It works by netbooting from your server. Some kind of bootrom code, either on your network card or on a floppy disk, initalizes the network card. It uses DHCP to find its own IP address, and then it uses TFTP to download a small Linux kernel over the network. This loads up and uses an NFS-mounted root to run an X server on the local computer. The X server connects back to the main server by XDMCP, and you get your XDM/GDM/KDM login window.

The LTSP guys have done a great job packaging this all up. Take a look. And as for your requirement of running it on a Windows box, see Cygwin's XFree86 port to Windows. You can use it to connect with XDMCP. Of course, I don't know why you wouldn't just pop in a bootdisk...

The biggest drawback to this approach is remote access security. Look at that paragraph and how many daemons and services you need to have running. But I imagine that if it was secured well enough, it'd be fine. Actually, there is a way to make this all go over VNC (or VNC with compression). It's not as fast, but at least that's only one TCP port and a lot easier to get by firewalls.

There's a great bunch of guys working on this project. And its nice to be able to connect to #ltsp on irc.openprojects.net and get the lead developers to answer your questions.

Michael F. Robbins

• Local cursor handling. Cursor movements do not generate screen updates any more, remote cursor movements are processed locally by the viewer, so you do not see remote cursor pointer moving too slow behind the local cursor.
• Efficient compression algorithms. New Tight encoding is optimized for slow and medium-speed connections and thus generates much less traffic as compared to traditional VNC encodings.
• Configurable compression levels. You can choose any appropriate level of compromise between compression ratios and coding speed, depending on the your connection speed and processor power.
• Optional JPEG compression. If you don't care too much about perfect image quality, you can enable JPEG coder which would compress color-rich screen areas much more efficiently (and image quality level is configurable too).
• Web browser access. TightVNC includes Java viewer with support for Tight encoding and local cursor feature (viewer applet may be accessed via built-in HTTP server as in the standard VNC).
• Operating under Unix and Windows. All new features listed above are available in both Unix and Win32 versions of TightVNC.
• Advanced Properties dialog in WinVNC. Unlike the standard VNC, TightVNC gives you a possibility to set a number of advanced settings directly from the WinVNC GUI, and to apply changed settings immediately. There is no need to launch regedit to set query options, connection priority, to allow loopback connections, disable HTTP server etc.
• Automatic SSH tunneling on Unix. Unix version of TightVNC viewer can tunnel connections via SSH automatically using local SSH or OpenSSH client installation.
• And more. A number of other improvements, performance optimizations and bugfixes, see WhatsNew and ChangeLog documents.

• Local cursor handling. Cursor movements do not generate screen updates any more, remote cursor movements are processed locally by the viewer, so you do not see remote cursor pointer moving too slow behind the local cursor.
• Efficient compression algorithms. New Tight encoding is optimized for slow and medium-speed connections and thus generates much less traffic as compared to traditional VNC encodings.
• Configurable compression levels. You can choose any appropriate level of compromise between compression ratios and coding speed, depending on the your connection speed and processor power.
• Optional JPEG compression. If you don't care too much about perfect image quality, you can enable JPEG coder which would compress color-rich screen areas much more efficiently (and image quality level is configurable too).
• Web browser access. TightVNC includes Java viewer with support for Tight encoding and local cursor feature (viewer applet may be accessed via built-in HTTP server as in the standard VNC).
• Operating under Unix and Windows. All new features listed above are available in both Unix and Win32 versions of TightVNC.
• Advanced Properties dialog in WinVNC. Unlike the standard VNC, TightVNC gives you a possibility to set a number of advanced settings directly from the WinVNC GUI, and to apply changed settings immediately. There is no need to launch regedit to set query options, connection priority, to allow loopback connections, disable HTTP server etc.
• Automatic SSH tunneling on Unix. Unix version of TightVNC viewer can tunnel connections via SSH automatically using local SSH or OpenSSH client installation.
• And more. A number of other improvements, performance optimizations and bugfixes, see WhatsNew and ChangeLog documents.

TightVNC is available here.

TightVNC can use jpeg encoding. good stuff. check it out.

on another note....wasn't this in the win2k license also?

Try TightVNC. They have it optimized for low bandwidth with different levels of compression. It may look a bit fuzzy but it's faster than regular VNC. It even has automatic tunneling thru SSH. It's already used in Mandrake. Dunno about other distros.

Microsoft has a computer pad called the Mira, its not really a PC, but uses winxp's built in terminal services to allow you to view video/audio and surf the web. Heres a link for the Mira

I think the kids could use a Aqua as a seperate computer, they could use it for IM, Email, Web, maybe attach a keyboard or some kind of docking station when they need to use it for more indepth work. If the prices where right, and could beat a 300-400 dollar computer system from pricewatch then I could see myself buying it. Unless its a geek impluse buy for myself. :)

Even thou people are working on portable hardware, the remote desktop control is either TightVNC or MS Remote Desktop. And M$ Remote desktop is much quicker, plays video, audio and games over a lan network. Not knocking tightvnc, I use it on my unix and solaris boxes. Good thing the Aquapad runs WinXP, that will secure some good sales in the non-linux markets.

-
If I had to sum up in one word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act. - Lee Iacocca

If you're hating VNC because of its bandwidth usage, check out TightVNC. It's basically a fork of VNC that merges in Tight Encoding (which I don't know much about, but which uses far less bandwidth than normal VNC) and a bunch of other nifty features. Of course, since it's a fork of VNC, you can rest assured it's under the GPL.

Nifty features it includes:

• Zlib compression
• JPEG compression where appropriate
• automatic ssh tunneling on Un*x
• Better handling of cursor updates
• others...

It's much more usable over a modem(!), for sure.

Where I work, PC Anywhere is the one on our list. Of course, (tight)VNC is heralded as the best product ever..

All new XP boxes do.... it is supposed to allow Microsoft support to remotely fix a machine. They already can kill the box remotely if you happen to share the same key as 10K of your friends.

While its not hidden from sight, check out tight vnc if you want remote access to your box. Nifty little program for those of us who need to do something with a remote box - like my mom's....

And X efficiency beats the hell out of some of the alternatives (anyone used VNC on Windows?)
Mabey your still using the AT&T vnc distrobution, but if you check out TightVNC, you might just discover a version of VNC that gives acceptable performance over a 56k modem.
Also, network transparency is fine and dandy for many purposes, but VNC serves a difference purpose. I personally run a copy of GAIM on an Xvnc session and then vnc into that to check my IMs. This way I never loos ims when I connect to different computers. I also run X apps remotly off a machine I program on through ssh. a couple copies of gvim with all the files and an xterm to run the program from. VNC and remote X serve two completly different purposes.

Have you tried TightVNC? I don't know about it's CPU usage, but IMHO it is much better and faster than normal WinVNC. It can also do JPEG-encoding on the picture data, so it is really bandwidth-efficient.

Have you tried tight VNC??

And if your mobile phone is VNC enabled (more likely TightVNC enabled http://www.tightvnc.com/) you could have it use tons of services that are VNC enabled. Imagine driving by your regular ATM and controling its UI safely from your car (type in your PIN, select the amount, etc.). Then you just go ahead and swipe the card and get your cash and ... voila!

Am I just crazy or what?

--
Razvan Dragomirescu
eActiveSoftware SRL
drazvan@kappa.ro

TightVNC is actually very usable over a 56k modem (which only conects at 33.6 because of BT's DACS crap). This has nothing to do with telephony tho, as the compression techniques used in vnctight probably wont be too good for voice :), but if the other things like data sharing are done in a normal VNC kinda way then the tight encoding could be useful..

First, to make things clear, TightVNC is a VNC version which mostly concentrates on low bandwidth usage. It can be more than usable on modem connections (starting from 14.4 kbps) but actual bandwidth requirements strongly depend on screen contents and color depth. If you want best performance over a slow link, first of all remove colorful wallpaper from your desktop (and maybe restrict color depth to 8 bits in VNC viewer).

Next point. Most users know TightVNC for its 1.1 version which may be considered outdated at this moment. TightVNC development has made notable progress since then and bandwidth requirements are decreased a lot. Although new 1.2 release is not ready at this point, but (1) there are preview versions including most 1.2 functionality and (2) I hope it will be released less than in a week counting from now (I only have to do several changes in Win32 version).

To let you know more what TightVNC is, here is a brief list of features for upcoming release, from new version of its homepage:

• Local cursor handling. Cursor movements do not generate screen updates any more, remote cursor movements are processed locally by the viewer, so you do not see remote cursor pointer moving too slow behind the local cursor.
• Efficient compression algorithms. New Tight encoding is optimized for slow and medium-speed connections and thus generates much less traffic as compared to traditional VNC encodings.
• Configurable compression levels. You can choose any appropriate level of compromise between compression ratios and coding speed, depending on the your connection speed and processor power.
• Optional JPEG compression. If you don't care too much about perfect image quality, you can enable JPEG coder which would compress color-rich screen areas much more efficiently (and image quality level is configurable too).
• Operating under Unix and Windows. All new features listed above are available in both Unix and Win32 versions of TightVNC.
• Web browser access. TightVNC includes Java viewer with support for Tight encoding and local cursor feature (viewer applet may be accessed via built-in HTTP server as in the standard VNC).
• Automatic SSH tunneling on Unix. Unix version of TightVNC viewer can tunnel connections via SSH automatically using local SSH or OpenSSH client installation.
• And more. A number of other improvements, performance optimizations and bugfixes, from me and from other people.

As you can see, most major changes introduced in TightVNC are related to efficient bandwidth usage.