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VNC, No Longer Orphaned
geogeek6_7 writes "Icronic informs us of a couple new developments to everyone's favorite piece of remote-managment software, VNC. You may remember that the UK Lab responsible for the creation and maintainence of VNC closed. A company called RealVNC has been formed, sporting the original coders from the AT&T lab, and aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.' Secondly, the new company has released version 3.3.4 of VNC for Windows and Linux. Greater security and a new, speed-enhancing auto-encoding feature are included among many others in the new version."
Seems like they could make a decent living by selling an enhanced, secured version and then have the "last version" free as in beer & speech to help spread the product. Similar to how Aladdin has done with Ghostscript.
I reformatted my hard drive and re-installed my OSes. Mandrake 9 is cool, but it doesn't come with pine! Anyway I went to re-download my apps and found that a new version of VNC came out days ago. I don't know if they formed a new company called realvnc because the web site is still at bell labs. I think they just changed the name of the program. The most welcome new feature is that you don't lose your wallpaper if you don't want to. Not to mention it is faster and better in every way. If you use VNC, get the new one. I must say that the icons for VNC are now uglier than they used to be, anyone got the old one?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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!
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
I wonder how long VNC will be in general interest once people begin attempting to emulate RDC (remote desktop connection(s)) both from a server and client perspective in X and pre-win XP OSes.
Seeing as how it now comes with Win XP Pro the general consensus will be that RDC is the new "standard" to be emulated by everyone else.
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.
try coughing up some coin to communicate faster than 2400bps...
We were looking to do demos for our software (web based) and wanted to be able to do something like webex (I'd link but their website is down! guess I'm glad I didn't pick them!).
For 1 demo using their system to 15 clients it was going to run between $800-$1200 for 1 to 1.5 hours. I told my boss we could test a solution for free on my box (dual boot Linux/win2000) and if it worked it would be $1200 one time. I demoed to our higher ups and we have a salesman that is using it 2-3 times a day and since our corporate office has conference phone systems already they are free (already a paid service, so why pay twice?).
In the end we spend $800 on the hardware $320 on VMWare $0 on VNC/xfrbserver (spelling?) to export to multiple hosts, and we have an MSDN subscription so I run Win98 in VMWare so the person demoing feels at home (even though it would have worked in Linux w/Netscape the sales people and clients are more comfortable in Windows).
At first they found it a little confusing. But now it's all the rave and I just bring it up remotely (or from the office) and keep an eye on it to make sure they dont accidentally close the exporting server (xf0bserver?), you'd be surprised how many times they kill their own demo!!!! lol...
Anyway since it was so successful I'm implementing a solution to automate offsite backups using sftp/ssh and encrypting our backups daily.
I hope for their sake they never make the mistake of firing me b/c noone else could even tell you what ls does!!! lol.... ensuring job security by doing a good job, saving money, and implementing solutions they dont understand.
When you run Remote Desktop Connection the user is locked out of their screen, you can only export to one computer, and it's security is not what I would call "trustworthy".
VNC kicks the hell out of RDC in WinXP (and I use both at work).
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.
Now I have newer version of the remote app that our firewall administrator won't let through.
AskSlashdot (always a good idea at 12:30am):
Is VNC secure enough to run on a couple of high-traffic, high-exposure web servers? Man, would I ever catch hell if I talked the firewall admin into setting the VNC port open, then we get hacked through it. My company tends to trust commercial solutions like the really flakey Altiris CarbonCopy (formerly Compaq CarbonCopy). Any experience with security bugs?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I think im going to start developing OpenVNC.... .....what are you talking about? There is already RealVNC and TightVNC?
DoH!
*grumble* *grumble* All I have is a really old copy of visual age, like forr 2.x. Someone HAS to write it, I can't afford a decent KVM.
No, I do not work for them - but rather an evil empire that clears 9 billion a year worldwide.
For some time, since the abandonment, there has been a fork of vnc in order to support Mac OS X.
I wonder if-- i hope-- that this new company will integrate the Mac OS X fork into the main codebase, so that any of their new fixes that apply to the base encoding and networking are reflected immediately in the Mac OS X build, instead of waiting for the fork maintainers to merge and update.
How can i encourage this to happen?
--super ugly ultraman
There is a known method of password cracking for version VNC 3.3.2 which is vulnerable to dictionay and brute force attacks.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Mine shits out constantly. Maybe I need to buy the power supply instead of using ps/2 to draw power. It would have been nice for them to just include the adapter, I would have paid extra to get a damn KVM that doesn't chirp every other minute I'm typing, and make me wait 3-5 seconds before continuing typing.
There's plenty of servers for Xfree86 on osX, so that's not what I'm asking about. My guess is that the only difference is basically what window/desktop manager starts under the VNC server. But i've hunted and I cant figure out where the window manager starts in Darwin or in osxVNC server.
does anyone know where this is and how to rig a new vncserver to use the aqua desktop?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
for VNC would be rootless window display. I know it works by basically intercepting the desktop visual signal and sending it elsewhere, but wouldn't it be possible to just do that with applications? I suppose it's quite possible that this wouldn't work (thank you, Microsoft) but if it were workable it would limit bandwidth usage, at least. Anyone know the details of this problem?
:-)
Of course, that wouldn't let us do our favorite trick - freaking people out when they see a computer doing work by itself! More people know about it now, of course, but if you can find someone who doesn't know, and don't warn them ahead of time, the reactions can be quite interesting.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I don't understand it. I don't use windows. I use VNC and like it. I have used the X Windowing System on linux, solaris and some other thingies, and like its ease of redirection much more. I wish my operating system of choice (OS X) had XWindows-like functionality for remote app display. (*cough* NSHost anyone? Why don't we have a workalike to this?)
What, exactly, would "emulat[ing] RDC (remote desktop connection(s)) both from a server and client perspective in X and pre-win XP OSes" entail? I don't know what that means. I haven't used RDC, though i've a vague idea of its features, and i've used Terminal Server in an X-with-xdm-like manner. I don't get what there is to emulate.
Will you attempt to explain for the non-windows users?
I've tried out VNC before, but I thought it was slower than Windows Terminal Services client/RDP. Now that I've been using Linux I like using X11 over SSH while I'm at work/school. Has the new version made VNC faster? I have one last Windows box that would be nice to administer remotely.
(The fastest, to me, was RDP)
Vote for global prefs bug
some tips: generally you are better off NOT enabling ssh compression as VNC's compression works better. Supposedly tightVNC is the best for narrow pipes. But on fat pipes in actually is better not to compress. if you are worried about security do two things. first always turn off the http port (on by default at 580x). Second, for extra security only allow connections to/from loopback 127.0.0.1. Then use ssh to send it where you want. Finally, note that VNC itself is not encoded so the ONLY protection you are getting is the SSH encoding. If you dont tunnel all the way you are exposed. However since it is graphics info and not plain ascii, it takes a clever hacker to actually decode what you are sending in the clear.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"VNC is the one thing that makes me feel safe when I leave my computer because I know it's a broadband connection away."
Perhaps you're worshipping the wrong Linus here...
My Sig: SEGV
just look around. For example VNCThing for mac. You can even have is trap the control/command keys. When you uses it, it's eerie cause you can forget which machine you are on. Even the screen saver will pop-on
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Win2K terminal services like performance.
and the ability to function without the need for a video card.
I have used TightVNC (the enchanced VNC). It has very nice features.
Even at the best compressions its performance pales in comparison to that offered by Win2K Termianl services and XP's Remote Desktop feature.
Please say that you are developing VNC for the AQUA desktop. VNC for the Xserver exists for now.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
VNC is widely used in our company. It is a great alternative to a dual boot or or devoted Linux machine. Some people just arent up to speed with using the Linux operating system as their main environment. They use VNC on Windows to most of their development and use Windows for everyday applications such as Visio, Office, IE, Outlook,etc. (Ironically, all MS products..)
Its also a huge benefit for the sys admin so he doesnt have to waste time configuring each PC to meet the exact testing standards. We can just run a VNC client on Windows and have a Linux environment. No extra installment or configuration time.
VNC is a vital cost and time saver in our company.
100% Insightful
I'm finding that TightVNC is still noticably faster than the new release of RealVNC, despite improvements. Can someone explain the advantage of using Real, when Tight fulfills the majority of the functionality, adds features, and is overall faster? Is the compression more of a CPU load in Tight?
You know, I was about to write some interesting comments I had about VNC, but as I clicked on this story's "Read more" page, I noticed a huge square ad for Microsoft's Visual Studio! What, has Slashdot sold out?!?!? What is going on over here?
I use the client and server on win2k boxes, and the new version is noticeably faster. I definitely recommend an upgrade for anyone using the older version on windows.
We've implemented TightVNC to control servers on DSL in two satellite cities approximatley 50 miles away. However, the company LAN's gateway is 3000 miles away, making all VNC sessions 6000 mile round trip affairs. Tight never fails and is a godsend. When I get back to the office I fully intend to expense a PayPal donation to the VNC boys, they earn it daily.
My DSL connection is arount 100KBytes/s. At this rate, TightVNC is obviously noticably slower than a local connection, but it's fast enough that you can use it without feeling like throwing a rock at the monitor.
16KB/s or 32Kb/s would be noticably slower, but there are some things you can to that can help, even with TightVNC's tight encoding:
1. Don't use a complicated desktop background. All versions of VNC (including Tight) send low-level bitmap information, not high-level window information. The more complicated your background, the less it compresses, and the slower the repaints.
2. Have as few windows open as possible so your desktop is uncluttered - same reason as 1.
3. Use the lowest color depth you can stand for your particular application. If you're doing word processing, you can probably get away with 8bpp and it will be faster than 16 or 24.
4. When scrolling in a document, use the page-up and page-down keys (or page-up and page-down areas of the scroll bar) instead of the scroll slider. This results in fewer repaints, and any sluggishness is less annoying.
This is great! Does anyone know if it runs on FreeBSD? Thanks.
I've run redhat 6 and 7.2 and I've never succeed in getting KDE to work with VNC servers. Does anyone know what theproblems is? gnome, and all the other window managers work fine.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It is quite possible from a windows box, I use WinXP quite often and half of my work is done through a secure connection to my Linux boxes.
Putty is a great windows ssh client that is free to boot. It supports compression and port forwarding ( relaying too).
When configuring a new connection under putty, check the 'Connection->SSH-Tunnels' panel and check X11 forwarding, and add a local forwarding of say 5903 and destination as something like networkbox:5903. Then click Add and it will display like 'L5903 networkbox:5903'. Rember to save the session with a name and you will be set.
Rember though that the ip or system name will be relative to the box you have the ssh connection into. Packets will arive at the end of the tunnel and then be routed to the destination machine and port specified. In the above example, once connected to the remote machine, you will then be able to fire up vncviewer and connect to localhost:3 and have your connection attempt forwarded through the tunnel and on to the destination machine. Of course you will need to have vnc running as session 3 for this example to work without modification. Good luck.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I have been using VNC long before I started using linux. As soon as I started the Linux environment, I used VNC for remote access.
Question: Is there a way to use VNC (or other) to access the main X session (I guess tty0 in rh 7.3) and share it similar to how it is shared in windows?
While I speak of remote access, maybe someone can tell me why when I am @ an ssh shell, my path etc is never set.
Everyone has mentioned tightvnc, so I dont think thats needed but I will say that I found it really interesting when Farmers Insurance rolled out all the Dells to agents across the country, VNC was installed and running on every box.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
If you use VNC, they are accepting donations at http://www.realvnc.com/contribute.html.
I had a similar experience with VNC. It was more a matter of showing that OSS software was somehow 'worthy' though. First on the scene at work was VNC when I mentioned it to our former net admin and he started using it. Then I wrote a webapp using OSS tools (and made sure my manager, the net admin, God and everyone else knew it), and it was a highly visible and smooth rollout. Finally, all the recent MS security issues finally made our net admin cave and he decided last week to replace our MS proxy, with IIS next on the block. Now it cascades from there, since the app I wrote is on a server by itself and is going to be switched to Linux as well. And I'm also finally in a position to use Linux as my desktop OS.
To the VNC devs who helped kick it all off for me, thank you!
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
The site is in fact Icrontic. They just registered the Icronic name since its commonly misspelled. :)
:/
Hopefully their new server will survive the slashdot effect part III.
VNC is a dangerous toy without security, whether that be via SSH or tunnelling plus a firewall.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
What is the business model? Where is the revenue? This sounds like a dot.com from 1998.
Oops, you only have ONE other post for today, make sure it is more witty than this ;-D
Keep up the good fight, my man!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The name of the protocl is RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol. There's already an RDP client for Linux if you need it that works great with Windows 200 terminal services.
However, Citrix ICA is still years ahead of RDP in terms of bandwidth utilization http://www.medialogic.it/projects/mlview/>and flexibility. Furthermore, there's already an , although its still in beta. RDP is good, but its certainly not the best.
Oops, something went wacky there. Here's the correected version...
The name of the protocl is RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol. There's already an RDP client for Linux if you need it that works great with Windows 200 terminal services.
However, Citrix ICA is still years ahead of RDP in terms of bandwidth utilization and flexibility. Furthermore, there's also an compression tool that apparently matches Citrix in terms of bandwidth utilization, although its still in beta. RDP is good, but its certainly not the best.
Unless i am mightily mistaken: in a word, no. VNC is released under the terms of the GPL. This means that unless this new company owns ALL of the copyright to ALL of the code in VNC, which would mean they could relicense it-- which seems unlikely-- either an Aladdin-style or MysqlAB-style profit model is kind of out of the question.
If they link against GPLed code that they do not own the copyright to, and they distribute the result, they must put the resulting product under the GPL, it must be free as in speech, and the people they sell it to can redistribute it freely.
Correct me if i am wrong.
Anyway since it was so successful I'm implementing a solution to automate offsite backups using sftp/ssh and encrypting our backups daily.
Try using rsync and cron - rsync can tunnel through ssh and is pretty nifty as far as saving bandwidth goes (in case you're over a not-that-quick link, since you're talking a full windows installation).
I've been running VNC on Windows for quite some time and the built-in JAVA client is great for accessing from remote locations where I might not have a viewer.
That said, I've also paid for another bought another program called RAdmin. It's quite a bit faster than VNC (at least 3.3.3), uses fully encrypted data transfer for all connections, has built-in file transfer, remote shell, and remote shutdown/restart capabilities, and is very small and easy to install. They have a free 30 day evaluation which you might want to have a look at ($35 to buy). Just a very happy customer.
While I use VNC when I'm out of town and want to remote access my machine at work so I can get in from anywhere, when I'm connecting two of my own machines, I use RAdmin for the speed, security and features. Unfortunately RAdmin isn't cross-platform (or an open protocol), so it's somewhat more limited than VNC. Each has their uses.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
RDC/RDP isn't a standard: as usual, Microsoft took a bunch of ITU standards and hacked them up to make them incompatible with everything else.
Nor is there much to emulate. Microsoft's RDP isn't even in the same league with X11 in terms of functionality or performance over LANs. For dial-up connections, there are also good X11 protocol compression solutions. VNC outperforms RDP greatly in another area: it's a very simple, well-documented, open protocol that is easy to implement and works pretty much everywhere. There are VNC servers for 8bit machines, even. Furthermore, X11 and VNC clients and servers are available for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX, so you can already talk from any platform to any other platform with the open protocols.
People will be able to interoperate with Microsoft RDP via projects like RDesktop--as long as Microsoft lets them and on those odd days when they ship it (Windows XP Home doesn't come with it). Building anything else on top of RDP is like building on quicksand since the world can shift from under you whenever Ballmer feels like it. If Microsoft wanted you to use RDP for anything else, they would have picked an open standard.
I do hope they remember that VNC was and is used on more than the popular desktops, Ive seen versions for every obscure platform Ive ever layed eyes on, and they should aim to keep it working on most *nix OS's and others.
If you need to ask, it probably isn't, for you.
The correct way to use VNC on any machine where security matters the least bit is to allow only local connections to it (-localhost flag) and use an ssh or stunnel connection to connect to it (both work on Windows, MacOSX, Linux, and UNIX).
Another approach is to have the VNC server make an outgoing connection to a known host and to use the vncviewer with the "-listen" flag. That lets you use a VNC server even if it's behind a firewall.
If Microsoft is stupid enough to advertise on Slashdot, I say let 'em. They're subsidizing a website we like, and it's pretty unlikely to have much of an impact on their sales, given how polarized Slashdot readers already are. I mean, seriously. It's like buying an X-Box and never buying a game for it, but running Linux on it (Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sold) but we don't even have to go out and do anything, Microsoft is screwing themselves over with no help. Plus, I think it's pretty funny.
I metamoderate all Redundant and Offtopic moderations as Unfair.
"I hope for their sake they never make the mistake of firing me b/c noone else could even tell you what ls does!!!"
These kinds of things and people like you is exactly why so many companies are reluctant to switch to Linux. Sure, in your case, your company saved a little money but what happens if you have an accident or leave the company? They have no idea how their own system works and will be completely screwed. This is not the kind of situation companies want to be in. That's why companies would rather stick around with "comfortable and familiar" Windows solutions, even if it crashes every once in a while or has a hundred security bugs that need to be patched every year. In the long run, it's still a smaller risk for the company than relying on some geek who finds it funny (your "lol") that the company is completely dependent on you.
I'm still working on BeOS versions, even if the server is still alpha. :^)
c .zip
w er-rele ase6.zip
:-)
(note there are 2 servers for BeOS, and at least 3 clients
the last source of my server is at:
http://clapcrest.free.fr/revol/beos/BeVnc-sr
and I merged the different versions of the client to get this:
http://clapcrest.free.fr/revol/beos/VNCVie
If you use it or want to help, mail me (my mail is in the README for BeVnc, or 1st line of CHANGES.TXT in VNCviewer.
I must say VNC is one cool little tool. I setup a scanner connected to a scsi card on a system, and located it where my users can use it, w/out bothering me :)
The scanner was on my desk for a year, and everyone who used it, always interuputed what I was doing at the time, when they needed to use it...
VNC works great because I can have this networked scanner running on a PC, w/out a monitor connected to it, thus saving me space for the two printers that sit along side the scanner.....the PC it's connected to is under the printer stand......if someone has an issue w/the scanner, I can use VNC to check it out from my workstation...
The login when booting the PC the scanner is connected to is automated as well, using TweakUI.....so all I have to do is fire up the PC every morning, it logs in automatically, and the scanner is up and running...
"Look where we worship" -- Jim Morrison
http://www.tridiavnc.com/ have been providing
a free and commercial VNC for quite a while.
I don't know there relationship to the original
developers.
An even MUCH better method (which is just some few lines shell script more) is described at here or use mirror here.
Yes, that really works - and it is so SIMPLE and USEFUL!
Thomas Waldmann
One of my favorite things to do is to run VMWare sessions on my computer and within those run VNC so that various people can look at what I'm working with (rather than give them access to my own desktop, they just get the virtual machine).
You could do the very same by simply running VNC Server in each VM (of course, that's only really feasable if you give each one a different IP address...). =)
...in their distro. Stumbled across note of it in their change logs a while back.
i noticed that this new version of vnc no longer causes problems with hardware... as in i no longer have my win2k/winxp machines getting the blue screen of death which is great :P
Windows and Linux only. Fuck even at&t HAD a mac version of the client and the server. What happened to those?
VNC is already split into the original distribution from ORL (now RealVNC, TightVNC from Constantin & friends, eSVNC, which added security and file transfers (though win only) and a bunch of Pocket PC, Palm, MacOS, OS X etc. forks.
VNC is such a wonderful und useful program and I sometimes dream of how much better, securer and faster it could be.
Plaese combine your efforts. The world will thank you.
bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Use vncconnect in a cron job to connect to you! Since the connection is coming from within the secured network, and going out to the internet, the firewall will let it right through! :-)
Just so everyone's clear, VNC was never "orphaned". Immediately after the announced closure of AT&T Research UK, the domain VNC sits on was pointed to Cambridge University, where AT&T sponsors some research activities. Additionally, RealVNC (the company) was formed almost immediately and began work. TightVNC and the other variants were never affected - yay for open source!!
There's already a company doing this: TridiaVNC
There are a couple of things that you should be aware of before putting VNC on Windows 2000 servers. The first is the well-known problems with security, including the "encrypted" hash stored in the registry and the brute force vulnerability.
More importantly, though, for those of you thinking of running VNC on heavily-used Windows servers is that the CPU run queue tends to increase by 8 or so when VNC is in full screen polling mode. If you want to run perfmon over a remote connection, the two free RDP connections on W2K Server are a much better choice.
What does MSDN have to do with it?
Do you think that your MSDN license permits unlimited use of all microsoft products for any reason?
Direct, commercial use of Win98 the way you are using it probably requires a proper license.
Link is here.
NetOp has been around for a while, and used here extensively in the 1990s. Vendor support is notably above average, and there are interoperable DOS and Windoze versions as well.
It isn't cheap though.
give me a
I installed RealVnc on my win 2000 machine. Whenever I try to login with vncviewer from linux it asks me for a password. After that it gives me a black screen for a split second and throws me out with no warning at all!
But for XP, and far worse, OSX, it gets worse and worse.
Mac OS X's animations can be turned off. Windows XP can be set with a couple clicks to look like Windows 2000.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...iChronic, which is the marijuana preferred by Macintosh users. It costs a little more, but it's worth it.
Methinks you're missing what's going on there. If BoomerSooner has an accident or leaves the company, somebody will learn ls and a few other things. It's not *that* hard. In the meantime, it's much more productive to let BoomerSooner understand *how* it works and play hero while everybody else is helping to define the battles for him to win. Very quickly they exceed the scope where Microsoft Windows has "solutions".
try coughing up some coin to communicate faster than 2400bps...
I'm already communicating 20 times faster than that (48 kbps, the typical "56K" line speed), but it's still not enough. It's not possible to go much faster than that over the public telephone network.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I really like VNC and rely on it heavily but, it does have issues.
While security is not great, I don't see this as a major problem. It is simple enough to tunnel a VNC session which provides more than adequate security. This, however, does increase the bandwidth requirement.
Which brings us to the biggest problem, in my mind, with VNC. It still requires far too much bandwidth. Even TightVNC is still a bandwidth hog.
You mention RDP and X11 in your post. X11 is the absolute worst for bandwidth. Running something as simple as XMMS via X11 consumes up to 11Mbps. That's outrageous!!! RDP is far better than X11 but, it's bandwidth requirements are akin to VNC. RDP frequently consumes between 70Kbps and 200Kbps. Sure, it will work over a 14,400 connection but, given the extra bandwidth, both VNC and RDP will eat it up and on low speed connections it is very slow. In these low bandwidth situations it is even worse than PCAnywhere.
By far, the best protocol that I have seen for remote sessions is Citrix ICA protocol. Provided the bandwidth is available, this protocol will use up to 150Kbps bursts for very high resolution and color depths but, on average ICA uses between 20 and 40Kbps. With tuning such as lower color depth and resolutions and disabling animation ICA will work remarkably well even over a 14,400bps connection.
The difference in performance between ICA and any of the other protocols is phenomenal. High color, high resolution and high performance, plus it supports high security too. ICA has a similar effect on people that broadband does. Meaning that once a dial-up user has used broadband for a little while they cannot stand to use dial-up again, it's just too frustrating. A similar experience occurs when comparing ICA with any of the other protocols. The balzing speed and quality of the ICA session makes you very frustrated when you go to use VNC or the other worse protocols.
Unfortunately, Citrix ICA is proprietary and expensive. While it can be served from both Windows and Unix platforms it is primarily found in Windows environments. It is my hope that the VNC team will be able to come up with something similar to the ICA protocol. That would be awesome!
You could do the very same by simply running VNC Server in each VM (of course, that's only really feasable if you give each one a different IP address...). =)
Can't you make them listen on different ports?
RealVNC has a better install routine on Sun, it feels faster, and looks a bit better than TightVNC. The "auto sense" for connection options is a great idea. Nonetheless -- I'm sticking with TightVNC for a little while at least ...
TightVNC supports the mouse wheel (which I use when scrolling around source code) and I have trouble with some key combinations (e.g. ALT-ENTER) when using RealVNC.
If RealVNC gets mouse wheel support and their keyboard support improves I'll probably switch.
the backup server will be running linux RAID 1
the program for exporting our backups will be on windows. so I'm using a custom program to encrypt and compress (via CL rar) our data then I'm calling the sftp routine to transfer it to our offsite server. our server is at our hosting company so the transfers will not have to go through the internet at all (just to our hosts router). We have it encrypted incase someone steals the computer from their location they can rip apart the hardware but the data files (medical records) will not be accessible without a hell of a lot of work (HIPAA req). and realistically the data isnt valuable, we just are very security concious because the HIPAA laws make your liability (civil and criminal) a very high deterant to being carefree with others data.
I tend to get hyped up when I have something (that I think) is interesting to say, so I tend to type faster than I compose my thoughts!!! Hope my explaination made more sense this time!
on how to do everything on the computers we use them for, with the exception of reinstallation and configuration because that is why you buy a 550lbs book by sams, o'reilly or another book publisher.
In the end we did vnc for $1200 instead of terminal server for around $12000 for hardware & software. If I leave/get hurt there is a $11000 dollar incentive for someone to pick up a book. AND our network company we use is heavy into unix/linux so we already outsource 80% of the networking stuff to them, so they could simply outsource anything that needed to be done on the linux servers without too much difficulty.
I still put the company first because, it saved a ton of cash, it is the best solution, and I have demonstrated to the other developers how to use it. If they dont want to take the time that isn't my fault/problem.
I had 1 day to get the hardware and to get it working.
When you have no time to prove yourself or your solution you do it the quickest/easiest way possible. Plus we have scaled it in testing to over 150 connections at once. Our IP range is not that large, and i'd hate to have to maintain it. The way I did it was quick, easy and effective.
Although the main reason i'm replying (other that i'm just waiting on todays OU vs South Florida game on TBS at 6pm CST, i'll be there so keep your eyes open!) is I'm looking for alternative tweaks that might make it a better system.
Thanks to everyone for your input!
We have an unlimited site license for anything we install. We use the MSDN to get the disks. Our parent company does an annual internal audit to see what we are running and since they are a Certified Microsoft Solution Provider we pay them accordingly. I don't understand why people assume the negative first. I guess it's just attitude. My parent company is a multi billion dollar pharmacy vendor, they can afford it just fine.
Technically there is only 1 copy of 98 installed. The VNC connections use a client tool I recompiled to allow viewing only. We are simply doing a remote slide show so they don't get confused while being demonstrated to from across the internet.
Since MS Terminal Services is bundled with Windows 2000 Server and XP, and has 25000% better performance than VNC, I can see this only appealing to cross-platform users.
I assume the negative because I worked at a company where they somehow thought that because they were a developer of software/hardware, and because they had an MSDN subscription, they didn't have to pay for any microsoft products beyond their annual MSDN fee.
Many other sites that have this also assume it.
Unlimited site license? Really?
From what I can see of this, it's basically something like a cross-platform PCanywhere or something similar? For linux I'm probably just as happy to use SSH, I don't really need a GUI for remote operations. Can anybody suggest why I would use VNC instead of just PCAnywhere/SSH, or is it just a cool tool to use?
*Note: We are using PCAnywhere at work, if this does the job without the cost, I might just argue a switch.
We had a guy that left his remote-desktop control on. It took him 15 minutes to figure out why his mouse kept jumping away from where he was trying to click, lots of fun - phorm
VNC, AT&T, X11 and Display Postscript have pretty much all the bases covered in remote display protocols and most of them have been around since before Windows. As usual, Microsoft is shipping a cheap plastic imitation.
the above post is obsolete. the bug is fixed in newer versions.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A company has been formed aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.'
:)
:) I really AM behind them, I swear. Just having a little fun.
Yeah, I hear there's good money in that
Seriously, best of luck to them. VNC completely and totally rocks. I am an alumnus of VNC on Windows, Linux and AIX and it's a lifesaver.
I see it's one of those "it's free but please contribute so we don't starve" business models, augmented by one of those "You're a corporation that hasn't banned VNC for unspoken and ill-understood 'security reasons' yet? How about this 'enterprise support offering'?" models.
OK, fine... moderate me down. I've got some Karma to spare today
RP
Their site says Refunds will be given at the discretion of the Company Management at the bottom... what in the world is that about?
Seems to be a lot of focus on bringing in revenue for a company whose mission is to "act as the focal point for open source VNC". Suggesting that companies contact them about commercial support is one thing (and not a bad idea and I wish them all the best) but suggesting "commercial licensing" is downright silly. Even asking for donations is fine, but why the hell would anybody try to downgrade a license from free to non-free?
RP
actually my password is "Swordplay"
and I highly doubt anyone wants to use my computer.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
How is the future looking now that the EULA in Windows XP disallows remote administration tools other than Microsoft's, if I get it right.
Isn't the main purpose of VNC to control Windows machines? (You have other alternatives for other platforms).
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Umm, I wasn't kidding. What I said is actually happening. Upon re-reading it though, I can see how it could sound contrived. But, alas, NOT.
So, in the immortal words of Dr. Lizardo:
Laugh while you can monkey-boy!
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
which makes everyone happy.
VMWare GSX server has a remote console.
Seems like this would be a good place to ask - has anyone succeeded in using /etc/sysconfig/vncservers on a recent Red Hat system to auto-start vnc sessions? I've tried it, but no session gets started (and I'm fairly sure that I've got the syntax correct, as the file includes a perfectly simple example).
VNC doesn't just send "bitmaps" - VNC has a LOT of nice compression tricks that greatly reduce bandwidth.
Overall, I've found that VNC is almost universally faster than a remote X11 connection except in a few rare cases. I've tried remote X11, it's painful and laggy (xterm took 20-30 seconds to pop up a window last time I tried it) even over a 10 Mbit connection, but TightVNC (Not classic VNC, Tight seems to have some nice cursor anti-lag features) is silky smooth in the same situations.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I see that a) and c) are very valid points.
But b) shows that whoever's involved with their purchasing decisions is a fool. Tell him he should read his EULAs more carefully, because he'll find that most commercial software is "as bad as" or worse than open-source/free software in the liability/sue-ability arena.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This is great! I hope they fully integrate "Tight" encoding (http://www.tightvnc.com/) back into the main source tree. It's wonderful.
:)
/usr/bin/vncviewer -fullscreen' :)
I use VNC a lot at work. My desktop machine (with Outlook - bleh) runs a VNC server so that I can check email and such remotely from the lab I spend large amounts of time in. It is also nice because the rackmount machine I use in the lab for some of my work has a rather badly situated monitor, it's simpler to use a VNC viewer on my laptop 3 feet away.
The only annoying thing I've noticed, but haven't been found any documentation on: How does VNC's polling mechanism differ between Windows 2000 and Windows 98? My desktop in the cube runs Win2k and VNC sessions are silky smooth without any performance tweaks to improve VNC performance. The lab machine mentioned before runs '98 and is laggy as anything even with a few performance tweaks (16-bit color depth, etc.) and the fact that it's sitting on the same 100 Mbit hub as the viewer as opposed to traversing the network across the building. The machine hardware is nearly identical between the systems.
Note: I'm running TightVNC in all instances.
My favorite command: 'startx
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This guy works for a Fortune 500 company. If you think their lawyers can't overcome a shrinkwrap EULA... well, let's just say there'd be a settlement in about 30 seconds if something big broke, EULA or no EULA.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth. However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall. On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point. "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor. "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him. "Suck? Suck? Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out. Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair. "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
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