Slashdot Mirror
Which VNC Software Is Best?
Futurepower(R) writes "Which VNC software do you think is best, and why? There are several free programs, for example, TightVNC, RealVNC, UltraVNC, and TridiaVNC. Or, is it better to pay for VNC software, like Tridia VNC Pro or Radmin? Which is fastest, most secure, and the least hassle? Which has video resolution scaling of the remote desktop?"
UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.
vino's included in gnome 2.6 and uses the new xorg extensions making it very very fast
tight vnc has delivered better video and a more stable comneection for me both over a local netowrk at college and phone modems at home.
TightVNC
The ATT VNC is the best.
Use VNC on a windows box, and x2vnc on a linux box.
Have fun.
I'd go for the first to support OS/2.
Let's think about this for a moment. UltraVNC is the only Windows VNC that acts like a video driver. THus it's the only one that doesn't need to poll the hell out of your computer. Thus it's the only one that gets all the screen updates right.
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
For Mac OS X, there are several options; what I believe to be the best options are below.
On the server end of things, there's OSXvnc, a nice free VNC server for Mac OS X. (There's even an OS9vnc, on the same page.)
The best free client for Mac OS X, in my opinion, is Chicken of the VNC.
At the commercial end of the spectrum is Apple Remote Desktop 2.1. Apple Remote Desktop is much more than just a remote control solution; it provides desktop and systems management tools, software distribution tools, mass screen sharing, scripted actions, and all sorts of other features. But as of version 2, the remote screen protocol is based on VNC. With one checkbox, any VNC client can connect to any machine running Apple's VNC server software (which it confusingly calls "Remote Desktop Client"), and Apple's client software (which it calls "Remote Desktop Admin") can connect to ordinary VNC servers on any platform. Apple Remote Desktop does automatic resolution scaling, full screen, etc., and as of 2.1, even supports multiple monitors - even when using free VNC clients to connect! The VNC server piece (the one Apple calls "Client") is free, but there's a catch: at least one copy Remote Desktop Admin is required to be "legal", but then Remote Desktop Client can be installed on an unlimited number of machines in your organization.
I wouldn't use any of em; can't trust the VNC. Lousy Vemocrats!!!
is pretty nice and it is very well integrated with the DE as a whole
No idea about the others but avoid radmin at all costs. It's a security nightmare, easy to extract passwords out of and very easy to break into.
as a user of the original REAL VNC, i went to tight case it performed much better over dialup
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
The only VNC i have used is RealVNC, PCanywhere (Old) and Remote desktop for MS windows. I realize the best and most speedy one out of them all are actually Remote desktop that came with WindowsXP Pro and such.. I still use RealVNC for internet connection. The Java browser that does not requires software download are particularly useful. But perhaps it is time to check out the alternative... I didn't realize there are so many out there at all!
UltraVNC, it's works great.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Real VNC has worked great for me. I liked how you could access your VNC server with a java enabled web browser. I'm not sure if the others could do it, but I liked how Real VNC could do it.
If we're talking Unix(ish) systems then the fastest and most functional on fast connections (like ethernet) is actually "none of the above". A normal X11 session is much more smooth and responsive than any VNC. Endless scaling, etc...
And Terminal Services on Windows is much better than VNC (there are Unix clients).
Over slow connections VNC is better. I just use whichever works. I've found that RealVNC locks up/crashes Windows less often than the others.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
For Windows platforms, I find that Microsoft Terminal Server (aka Remote Desktop) is the easiest way to troubleshoot problems without actually being at the computer. It also seems to fair quite a bit better over dial-up lines than VNC does.
We use RealVNC at our office. I have played with UltraVNC, which I found to have a few stability issues, and TightVNC, which was nice. If I recall correctly, TightVNC has a file transfer feature, which comes in handy from time to time.
For those of us who don't know what the hell VNC is, anyone care to explain?
Thanks.
RealVNC is my personal favorite... and the only one i trust
Are we limiting these clients to *nix? Is there a reason to not use Windows Remote Desktop Connection? I use it on all of our Windows servers, and really, until I see a need, why should I use another? It is faster than any of the hardware (dell DRAC card or KVM IP), and if I connect via a VPN to a secured LAN first, is there a security concern?
If you blog it...
Yeah, I know you want a VNC based solution, but the Microsoft/Citrix remote Desktop Protocol rocks.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The first question is which VNC programs are GPL. This is the most important factor in finding the best VNC out there.
I have used a number remote control software packages (ranging from PCAnywhere to TightVNC), and in my experience, RAdmin provided the absolute lowest possible overhead on the wire - with PCAW 10 (the last version I used) and others, the best way to get the best performance is to cut the resolution down and cut the colour depth down.
With RAdmin, neither of these was necessary. I threw a sniffer on the wire to see what the traffic was like, and it was extremely small.
It also worked under Wine reasonably well (I don't know if they make a native Linux version now, they didn't when I played with it a couple of years ago). The amount of traffic with a 1600x1200x24 resolution on the remote desktop was small enough to be used over a dialup with reasonably good performance.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Radmin is damn good, but it's not a VNC. It's got it's own video driver and it's really kind of sleek.. Great if you need fast low bandwidth windows administration.. It's also really cheap..
Ultravnc is free with it's own video driver, and has some neat features the other vncs lack (like file transfers..) It has a nice feel, but it's a bit buggy and only works with windows..
Tightvnc has become the standard.. Good, clean.. It's nice.. Also recent version of RealVNC are good and I wouldn't complain about having to use those..
As a warning on non vnc's, stay away from CA's remote access product... It's terrible, buggy, slow, insecure, etc...
While we're on the subject, I use RealVNC to view my Linux desktop on a Windows machine. Does anyone know how to copy and paste text between X apps in the VNC session and local apps on the Window machine?
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does anybody know if it is possible to set up a VNC-server in Linux with some kind of authentication which allows me to log in as a normal user and others to log in and use the server only in "viewonly" mode (no input is sent from client to the server)? This would be useful for remote demonstration purposes for example. I'v only found the "viewonly" option on the client side but maybe I've missed something.
Subseven works fine for me
i got linux on my laptop and a windows pc next to me
(with its own monitor). I use x2vnc so i can use the lappy pc and mouse on both machines. connects to the sindows vncserver. you can do the reverse at the same time running win2vnc of the window box connecting to you linux vnc server. At home, i use grdestop to connect to work pc. much faster than any vnc connections
if
I need one that works well with Linux and Windows. Having problems as of late with the default Redhat ES package and Windows clients.
This guy is way out there
To the best of my knowledge, RAdmin is not based on VNC.
RAdmin has several nice features, but they're mostly not really anything you can't get from VNC. One cool exception to that is the ability to "bounce" from RAdmin servers. Let's say you are adminning a machine a remote location which is "messed up" in some way, bad subnet mask, bad default gateway, etc. You can set an intermediate machine at that location for RAdmin to bounce off of. It's also possible to use this to create an "RAdmin Gateway", so a machine on your edge network, which you bounce through to get access to the internal machines. That isn't a recommendation, but I've seen people do it before.
The 3.0 beta client also has nice Dealmaker features for me. Folder support, so no more one long ass list of all your connections (although you could DIY this solution through the use of command line shortcuts), and the ability to set the default refresh rate to something other than 100 updates/sec, rather than having to change it every time you make a new connection.
Other than that, they're all fairly similar. I like RAdmin's Get/Set clipboard feature. The file transfer is decent only for small files, but for those small files, it's great. There's a remote CMD shell feature which always struck me as a bad plan, but no worse than remote desktop I guess.
Try them all out, there's a 30 day trial of RAdmin anyway, just play. It's not nearly as fast as Terminal Services, but it's not as slow as (vanilla) VNC, or slow feeling I guess. And I haven't tried VNC in an eternity, so I'm no expert.
Really, RDP is the way to go if you have Windows2000 or 2003. It's super fast relative to anything else I use, 2k3 gives you the option of full color. However RAdmin is very good for servers on which you WANT multiple user sessions to "collide". I don't want someone logged into a server making contradictory changes to mine without us colliding with each other and backing off.
I like music
I use it on all my boxes... with an SSH tunnel of course.
For those who have been avoiding RealVnc on Windows beause it seemed to peg the CPU, 4.0 seems much better and faster. Also the web browser applet now pops out its own window so you don't have to scroll all aver the place because of the browser controls.
ZZ
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
In a *nix-only environment, I prefer ssh with X forwarding.
I've heard there are products that serve X over low bandwidth.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Tight VNC was pretty fast and worked well on my home network on Windows. You have to remember one is the Server and one is the viewer. Tight even will take down your desktop wallpaper automatically in order to save bandwidth. that was a nice feature built in.
Before you try to control your home computer from somewhere else, make sure you know how to configure your router. Your ISP phone agent will love to field those vnc questions I'm sure.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Darn, and I always thought the best came from microsoft!
It's pretty sweet. I opted to use Tight VNC because their site had the best links on SSH tunnels. I'm running it on all of my linux boxen now.
Once for kicks, I opened a VNC session to one of my linux boxen and then opened a remote desktop connection to a windows machine over 802.11b. The Remote Desktop was as slow as molasses, but it worked.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
xVNC.sf.net is a good for desktop support in the enterprise.
It's written in VB and is only for Windows 2000/xp workstations, but it allows you to browse the network and point and click installs on target machines. After your session has finnished, in uninstalls itself from the target PC without leaving a trace (no open ports on 5800!)
Oh yeah! it dosn't leave that pesky little V in the tray while running,either (totally stealth)
Nothing beats a straight up X session for unix & linux. My favorite remote control program for windows is PCDuo
I use TightVNC on Linux to RealVNC on Windows. I was surprised to find cut and paste works between machines. I love being able to pop in on the other PC.
I would have to go with TightVNC as my favorite but the folks at work swear by the Windows XP desktop stuff.
"Tempt not a desperate man" - Willy S.
As the administrator of an all Mac network (which I love), I use Apple Remote Desktop when I'm on my Powerbook, but when I have to use a PC, I use TightVNC. It has been the most stable and easiest to use when connecting to the ARDAgent on a Mac.
The used Tridia VNC and Tridia VNC Pro at work before I joined. My manager said that he thought Tridia VNC was really good, but that they messed it up with the Pro version. Better off sticking with one of the free ones IMHO.
Damien
For Windoze I use TridiaVNC because by default it does not open the browser port, 58xx, and with a few registry edits, I can tighten it down so the tray icon can not be seen, Joe User can not make changes nor kill the service, and I can restrict the IPs that can connect.
I'm a BBS orphan in a blogging world.
Real VNC (formerly just plain ol' "VNC") works great for what it is, but it's not possible to beat Windows Terminal Services. Real multi-user sessions, plus with it being tied to the OS, there's simply no need for polling what's on the monitor, giving real time performance (or close to it) even over dialup.
I don't respond to AC's.
I found a link to a capture program that will take your vnc frames and capture to a file. that might be useful recording your nerdness.
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/
------
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
i've tried a few of these VNCs, but i've yet to find one that supports locking/unlocking an NT/2K/XP desktop
and without this simple feature, they are simply useless
The best option is to use NX Serverto compress the VNC info. Then use the NX client to connect to the NX Server. This allows you security, snapiness, and best of all, one client to connect to RDP, VNC, X Windows machines. Mike
There's also NetworkStreaming, formerly ExpertVNC. Their focus seems to be on making it easy for an administrator to allow VNC to work from the 'wrong' side of a firewall, letting off-site support reps do their thing.
I don't work for them, I just know some of the folks there.
Apple has information on how to start Remote Desktop remotely for ARD versions 1.2 and earlier, 1.2.1 to 1.2.4, and 2.0 and newer.
I used several VNC clients, and I found Ultra to be the best one. Acts like a video driver, has file transfers, is free, and has several other features I can't remember.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Plugin Support
File Transfer
Integrated Winbloze Logins
Remote Screen Blanking
Better Vid Support
and more
I'm using this as the goto for remote support with ssh port forwarding as a conduit.
Is that true about the latest version of Radmin? This Radmin comparision with Real VNC says that Radmin communication is entirely encrypted. There is no option to disable encryption.
Don't mod me down yet! M$ bashing is coming up!
That doesn't mean WRA is perfect, it's a pain to use with NAT (and everyone seems to be behind one these days). For example, if I get someone who's behind a NAT to send me an invitation through messenger (the easiest way to help clueless people) it won't work more often than it will.
Then I have to Guide them through the process of creating an invitation file and sending it to me (Oh joy...) and invariably, I have to edit the
And of course, there is the whole proprietary, non cross-platform issue as well.
And I disagree with a previous poster: RealVNC actually does a much worse job pulling graphics overall than both WRA and Radmin.
My advice: Use Radmin if you can, use realvnc if you can't.
Yeah, I'm to stupid to live. This is it
Turning in my geek card...
I had a problem recently with TightVNC and Windows 2003 Server. When I connected to the server using TVNC the username and password prompts were greyed out. No way to log into the server at all, even at the console this was the same (not just over the VNC connection).
Upon searching usenet I found that various flavours of VNC cause this when the server service is loaded on Win2003 Server. The only way to get the login dialog box back properly is to do a dirty shutdown on the server and:
1. bring it up into safe mode, disable the VNC service, then reboot
or
2. Bring the server back up regularly and hope that it allows logins.
The problem cannot be replicated on demand (as far as I can tell), it seems pretty random. I had been running it on 2 Win2003 servers for at least a few months without a problem.
Just something to note.
Otherwise, TightVNC gets my vote! I still have it on my Win2000 and Linux servers.
NoMachine NX wins hands down.
You can test drive the free implementation, FreeNX, in Knoppix 3.6.
This is the best in every category listed in the origional post. I test drove it off a cable modem in the states to a dsl in Sweden and it was faster than *VNC on a 10mbit network. It is also more secure in that it runs over ssh by default. I think it may even do audio.
For our part, here's what we've settled on:
Win32 UltraVNC Linux / *NIX TightVNC for virtual framebuffers x11vnc for sharing outx11vnc -forever -passwd mysecretpw
Mac OS X OSXVNC for the server VNCViewer as the client I've heard good things about Chicken of the VNC (but haven't gotten around to trying it yet) Have fun!Yeap, defently the best...
:D
Its extra slow, has no inbuild security and the screen res of your mobile phone!
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Go HERE to look for the Original Industrial Strength VNC.
If the link fail, copy this and paste:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/virtualnetworkcompu
Thank you !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
BackOrphus is the gold standard for remote administration.. :)
RealVNC: the original.
TightVNC: optimized for low-bandwidth
Ultra: tons of extras - file transfer, chat, video driver, NT/AD security
Tridia: get around firewalls, more management features
I miss anything?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Something no one's asked yet, is which VNC programs work with multiple monitor setups?
I've tried it with a few of the free ones a bit ago and from what I remember only RealVNC seemes to a decent job.
Any other experiences? (Mine was with a WinXP server, Win2000 and OSX clients)
RealVNC uses the DFMirage hook display driver, these I suspect are used by UltraVNC as well as a host of other ones I suspect.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
The beta version has file transer, a much nicer interface, some open sourced display driver which speeds it up, etc.
All its lacking is encryption, and that can be had with an ssh tunnel. On windows can this be done with cygwin.
I only have experience with realvnc and tridia. In my last job we used realvnc, worked great across some realatively slow long distance frame-relay connections.
I've tried using tridia and I found it to be a bloated unintuitive piece of shit. Of course that's strictly a personal opinion, maybe it fits someone's needs. I guess I'm partially miffed that they still send me promotional emails and that's a big negative for the company and in my book a mark against their software even though that's functionally irrelevent.
I dropped tridia and went back to realvnc, small light does what I need, fast. I can control windows boxes via ssh tunnels. Things just work, which is of itself a minor miracle. So I love it and I'll stick with it. Reading other messages it looks like tightvnc is a good one too (I've never heard of it until now)...
Imaging a beowolf cluster of RealTightUltraVNC's
I've been trying it for a couple of days, it is secure (ssl 128bits), suports remote control (activex, java, html), file tranfers, run directly into browser (no software needed), and you can control EVERYTHING on your Windows, some tasks are easier to do through its interface than go all the way into windows screens and menus...
Unfortunately, in many of the labs here at the University of Dayton, remote desktop is disabled, and there are no install rights. Therefore, RD is effectively out of the question. At the same time, I love RD, and use it from other computers. The frustrating thing is that it logs you out of the computer, so you can't use RD on one computer, and then go use VNC on another, you just come up to a black screen on login. Quite frustrating.
But I've also used the two interchangeably without problem (i.e. RealVNC host -> TightVNC client, but I guess that's the whole idea behind VNC).
The only thing I've noticed that RealVNC and TightVNC seem to lack is encrypted authentication - I think passwords are sent plaintext. Could be wrong. There could also be some plugin to enable this but I haven't noticed.
Remote desktop is not the same beast as VNC. VNC and derivatives are based on getting bits and pieces of your desktop video image that change, then compressing them (or not), and sending them to the other end. Once on the other end, they are decompressed (or not) and blitted to a video buffer to build up an image. That's it. That is all VNC does. It gives you an image of what is going on on the remote end.
Remote desktop however is a bit different. It doesn't give you just an image of what is occuring on the other end. Remote desktop is a stripped down single user terminal server. When you connect to an XP or 2000 machine using RD, then the remote XP machine redirects all local console functions of that machine to your client. This has the effect of knocking out whoever is sitting at the local console of the machine you are RD'ing into. In effect, all video operations are redirected to an off-screen video buffer, then compressed, and sent on their way using the remote desktop protocol. The sucky thing about this is that remote desktop only allows one and only one console session to exist.
Remote desktop also encrypts the entire session using 128 bit encryption. It even allows you to redirect your local disks and printers to the remote machine for use. You can use this feature for a sort'of poor mans VPN. All the data moved through the redirected drives will be encrypted and moved over the RDP port.
Remote desktop is faster than VNC because Microsoft is able to perform tricks in kernel space. For example, if you fire up windows media player to view a video file, then that data doesn't have to be rendered at all on the remote machine. Microsoft simply streams it to your client machine using RDP. The same thing however won't work with Apple QuickTime or RealPlayer. I'm also not entirely sure whether the windows are even drawn to video first. Microsoft may be pulling some redirection of GDI commands so that RD acts somewhat like X in that respect.
Our site uses VNC for user desktop support since the video is shared with the user. We use remote desktop for server management. Remote desktops feature for helping the user is problematic at best becuase they have to invite you to join first. It whole invitation thing is simply cumbersome. That's why it is just simpler to use VNC.
So, there are positives and negatives to using VNC or RD.
+1
As a test, we are running Radmin over a VPN.
(VPN is Virtual Private Network, for those who don't work with these things. A VPN allows a remote machine to behave as though it is connected to the local network.)
Have you ever heard of anyone breaking into a DES-encrypted VPN with a pre-shared key? I'm guessing it would be difficult.
The Radmin web site says Radmin is entirely encrypted.
Is a VPN safe and appropriate communication for VNC?
Overall I like TightVNC the best. I have used it in a variety of situations, the most challenging of which was having my aunt install the VNC server on her 33.6k modem-connected PC, so I could fix her spyware problems from abroad. That experience showed me that the Windows version was easy enough to use (that my aunt could use it), and was very efficient with bandwidth because it went over a modem connection quite well!
I have also run the TightVNC server on Linux desktops, connecting via both Windows and other Linux stations. Worked great! VNC is fantastic stuff.
The only downside (of VNC in general) seems to be lack of encryption of the channel. An easy solution to this is SSH tunneling - e.g. run PuTTY on the Windows side (it does tunneling) and connect through to your LAN station through your border's SSH server. Very secure, very convenient.
I've mixed and matched VNC servers to clients, and I've had many problems (and no, I don't mean obvious ones like plug-in encryption on Ultra and a non-encrypted client). The main problem that I have with mixing and matching is mouse pointer handling. One reason I really liked RealVNC 4.0 is that the local mouse pointer option works GREAT.
UltraVNC I've found has had some mouse pointer location issues.. it's spotty. Could be just me, but this was true on several different installs of servers and clients (and different connection permutations).
Probalby a redundant answer, but I'd say try them all out for yourself. I'd say the compression methods for all of them are pretty much even-steven amongst the flavors. I think the higher level of encryption is something to be looking out for, and the ability to browse directories and transfer files in the background is pretty cool, in UltraVNC.
On the freedesktop.org lists, there was talk of a VNC server that used X's new damage extension to work out what's changed on screen without crappy polling.
Go google for it. I have work to do.
Aww, after that parent post about the girl when I first came to the word "busted" in your post I thought it was going to be used as an anatomical reference...
Slightly off topic, but I found a bug within eclipse which was more easily documented with a screen cap movie. With a bit of research, I stumbled on vncrec and vnc2swf via this tutorial. Vncrec is excellent, producing good captures in the proprietary .vnc format, which obviously requires the viewer to have vncrec installed. Vnc2swf is perhaps a bit tricky to setup and the swf's it provides are of good quality, as shown here, and being flash(4) is nice and cross platform, relying on the ming libraries for encoding. I'm still researching audio mixing, but it should be possible to record in real-time to mp3 and multiplex into the output swf via vnc2swf's -soundfile param. Recording in this manner would be _great_ for complex api documentation, complex state-dependante bug reports, and other documentation applications.
i have been trying to set up VNC and just about have given up. the issue is, a friend of mine's corporate firewall only allows two outgoing ports, 443 and 80. the problem with trying to use VNC via the applet/browser is that even if i set up the VNC server to listen on port 80 on my computer, from from the corporate network my friend can not get past the login screen. what's happening is that the http-applet portion runs on port 80 but once you are authenticated, control is forwarded to port n+100, or port 180. that seems to confuse the firewall and a NoRouteToHost exception is thrown. i have tried every possible method but can not seem to get past this problem. what is lacking in the world is an http-based VNC-like solution which would work for people behind very restrictive firewalls. i have yet to find such a solution :(
If it wasn't for tightvnc I wouldn't have discovered a brilliant way to view pornography from our school computers. Encrypted to home, all the browsing is * actually * happening at home, thus not violating my school's computer usage policy. No cache files in the browser, no DNS lookups to monitor at school. An amazing thing I discovered is that I can even watch movies over a VNC session! Yes it updates fast enough. No sound though
Over a wireless connection, I've found MS Remote Desktop Connection (v 1.0.3 is a free download at microsoft.com) is more responsive than Chicken of the VNC. Apple's licensing scheme was too confusing for me, especially since I am just interested in a single connection to a Windows XP pro machine.
I've been using RAdmin for years at work and home on a daily basis. I haven't found anything better in any of the other VNC programs (haven't tried all of them on the list but quite a few).
Chicken of the VNC is the biggest piece of shit. I still use VNCThing, even tho it's dead and outdated. I still think it's a better program than Chicken. I'd rather use ARD Admin over chicken, even though it doesn't have as good feature support.
What's got me confused about VNC is no adoption of encryption for the standard protocol. Why not? Why must I tunnel VNC over SSH? Not that I can't. But encryption seems to be an obvious next step. And it doesn't seem to be taken (other than some one-off proprietary implementations).
Has anyone ever used dameware? What do you all think of that versus the rest of these?
If it wasn't for C, we would be stuck using BASI, PASAL and OBOL.
I have been using VNC for years in one form or another, but I still need to go back to PCAnywere for one single feature that no VNC that I am aware of has. That is a 'callback' type capability.
With PCAnywhere, you can have it connect to a remote IP, and have that IP take you over. As was said above, this alleviates on of the major pains of VNC, NAT.
In fact, I am running into this with one of my networks now, poke holes in the firewall to allow the once a week remote connection, or go the other way. No VNC that I can find does this. If there is one, I would love it if someone points it out, it would allow me to throw PCA out once and for all.
-Charlie
It has the best features of the differnt VNC flavors all wrapped into one.
It can use NT authentication, has an encryption plugin, auto selects the best transfer mode, has a video driver, and too many features to list. I have it on all of my servers at work.
The file transfer is one of my favorite options.
You can't take the sky from me
I agree it's very nice, and I use that to connect to Windows machines, but it's not VNC, and doesn't work to connect to hosts other than Windows hosts with MS RDC support.
I used UltraVNC for a while, and I agree, it was supurb.. vast, showed all the windows that appear when you mouse over things (most don't, and especially not translucent ones)... BUT... and it was a big but (oooh, so many jokes)... it had the annoying habit of rebooting the machine it was running on when I had Shareaza running for any amount of time with a number of bit-torrents downloading.
Now... I have since worked out that Shareaza (at least version 2, haven't retried bitorrents with 2.1) has/had some issues with Bittorrents... but rebooting the machine, that's a bit much.
No other VNC client rebooted the machine, they would just end up refusing to connect with Shareaza running with mulitple bittorrents. So, while it was limited to the interaction of UltraVNC AND Shareaza, and is therefore not entirely UltraVNCs fault, it made me wary of it.
I should give it another try though, it was fast.
According to this web page, RealVNC is spyware, ha!
This topic works out conveniently. I currently have a problem with VNC and Solaris when running Java Apps on the server console. If I use VNC to access the server console, the gui from my java apps appear all black. Has anyone else run into this issue or have a solution.
... less filling!
Unfortunately besides that and remote desktop our company doesn't support any other products.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Having used VNC for years and Remote Desktop for some, I have to say NX is definitely the future. As for VNC clients, if you have to go with one, get TightVNC.
If you're using VNC, you probably notice how slow it is. UltraVNC/TightVNC is a big improvement over regular VNC, as well as XWindows, but they're all dog slow.
NX (by NoMachine) and FreeNX (the GPL'ed edition) are REALLY fast, on the other hand. They are 100% encrypted through SSH and can tunnel to VNC, X, and RDP....
NX will currently only host from Unix/Linux. However, there are a bunch of clients.
I made an IMMEDIATE change to FreeNX/NX after using it only once. Now, I no longer use VNC for Linux....
Shouldn't this be a poll question?
[o]_O
If the goal is too remote a window box (XP?) from a linux box, the best solution may bee rdesktop It use Windows Remote Desktop and is very well done, fast as light. Copy-paste is working well *most of the time* too.
Timbuktu
It's not free, but it has Windows and Macintosh versions. And it's like sitting at the computer, at least on a LAN, whereas VNC refreshes very slowly.
-----
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
Ok, ok, I admit, I am not fair, there is probably a case where VNC may be useful while doing some end-user support with Linux desktops and you need to access the same graphical interface as the user to show him/her something. I said probably, because I don't know if VNC fits the bill for this task. I have never ever used VNC before, I planned to do once, but found another way to do my task.
Anyone can tell us if VNC is appropriate to do end-user support and taking over control of his/her graphical desktop while enabling him/her to watch what you are doing remotely?
Achille Talon
Hop!
The MS remote desktop is usually going to be faster than VNC, the limitation being obviously that you're dependant on MS to provide the client and server side for both systems you're using.
I use it daily on my mian desktop box (OSX) to control my XP box, but use Chicken of the VNC for anything more remote. I found that strangely TightVNC actually is more responsive over a ~100kb/s connection than MS Remote Desktop was, so I use VNC to control my XP desktop at work, even from my XP desktop at home.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I used VNC right up until I found the fatal flaw which should scare anyone away from it.
I VNC'd into my work machine to check a few things, but then needed to check my email on my own desktop. Without thinking (I thought I was at work because, hey, this is my work background!) I VNC'd to my home computer - which is the computer I was using to VNC into work.
Let me tell you what. It wasn't bad enough that VNC crawled to the speed of molasses going uphill on a cold day. No, VNC further decided to lag the mouse movement so everytime I inched closer to the 'X' to close the session, it would jump forward a little, then backward more than I moved and oscillate there a little bit until it settled down and I could try again. It took control of the mouse on my screen!
Someone needs to check into this. Seriously, someone could be injured if they accidently VNC'd recursively. I'm just glad it was only looped on itself once. Imagine if I VNC'd through a dozen computers! The oscillations would never dampen, bringing the universe (at least the internet, and they're pretty much the same thing anyway) to a grinding sine wavy halt.
Is there a VNC that checks for this failure mode? Perhaps a good PID algorithm is all that's needed, but something must be done.
-Adam
So, basically, VNC is an ugly hack which you need if you don't have a network-transparent windowing system in the first place, like you have in the X Window System:
Here. Couldn't some basic info be included in the story?
I am a big VNC fan :).
At work I use vnc to connect to my development machines and sometimes to my workstatio/laptop from the machine room at times when I eat my cubicle-mates lunch.
But over all RealVnc under windows is more responsive than tight vnc under linux over a ssh encrypted port over a broadband cable modem. VNC with in the LAN is great. Connecting in Linux is not bad the screen refresh is all screwy can be the display dirver or something. Not really concerned. I usually use the command line nad open up multiple shells. Vnc is good if you want to use some gui based program ( e.g. use bit-torent to download stuff because your company network is not so .... willing ). Or do remote administration on a MacOSX box using vnc. This is a good comparison and a good discusion. will give the tightvnc 1.3 and Ultra Vnc a good chance.
I have to find a vnc server that supports view only or shared at server start up. Also I never got vino to work on FC-2 any hints .
PS Yankees just lost it is the end of world as we know it.
thought i'd throw in a link to AW remote commander. it ranks right in there with radmin, and might even be better (depending on who you talk to). check it out
As other posters have pointed out, for Microsoft(r) Windows(tm), the Remote Desktop protocol actually performs surprisingly well. While I personally despise Microsoft's business methods and nearly all of their software design, I have to admit that this is one of the things they seem to have implemented well.
That said, I've been wondering - is it possible to run a "remote assistance" session with rdesktop (that is, connecting to a Windows(tm) machine from a non-Windows machine)? And are there any RDP servers for X11 in development (or should that be an X11 'client'? That always throws me off in X11...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I've noticed at least a couple of commercial VNC's mentioned in this thread, and in fact "RealVNC" the successors to the original VNC project claim to have commercial versions available as well.
:)
Since the assumption is the commercial versions by many vendors are derived from the GPL'd free versions, is that a GPL violation?
If this issue has been hashed to death (and resolved) by the VNC community, feel free to let me know
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
which I find to be very useful. Do other vnc clients even offer an encyption plugin? I'm sure others may have caught up by now but IMHO ultravnc take the cake feature wise and works perfectly for me. Really after using it I don't know how people get by using some of the more basic versions of vnc out there. I guess you use what you know.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I've been using the NX solution from No Machine for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I'm impressed so far. The performance overall is vastly superior to VNC. I have used it comfortably over WAN links with and without VPN tunnels and have never been severly affected by lag.
Definitely worth trying out: http://www.nomachine.com/
The only drawback of course is that they don't have a Win32 version of the server.
My company used WebEx recently to give a demo to BAESystems, and we were very impressed. While it does cost money (over time, it's a service not a piece of software), the performance was impressive and since it all goes over port 80, no unpleasant firewall issues to deal with. Your desktop can not only be remotely controlled by another user, it can also be viewed by multiple users in a broadcast/presentation fashion.
FreeNX is for when it absolutely, positively, has to be double the speed. (-:
The NX protocol is essentially compressed and cached X; it talks to VNC, RDP and whetever else through its own proxy.
Mandrake 10.0 RPMs are here and here. The SRPMs will probably rebuild fine on 10.1 or 9.2 and are here and here.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I can't believe nobody has mentioned x2vnc.
It isn't like the other vnc's:
1) run the vnc server on your windows box as usual.
2) put your linux desktop next to it.
3) run x2vnc on the linux desktop.
4) move your mouse to an edge of the screen.
5) Ta Da! x2vnc traps mouse and keyboard and sends it to the other box.
6) Instant software KVM!
http://frederik.hubbe.net/x2vnc.html
To be picky (and yet probably introducing mistakes of my own), VNC is a remote framebuffer protocol. All native Windows implementations I've seen work as you describe: copying the console desktop to a remote framebuffer. But the X versions I've seen are standalone X servers resulting in (an) independent desktop(s) from the local console. That implementation tends to create stateless connections, but you can use inetd to create on-demand sessions complete with xdm login screens for each session.
It is possible, and I think there are some apps out there (especially embedded mp3 players) that can use VNC remote framebuffers as control GUIs independent of any X or Windows desktop.
I presume what prevents VNC from offering terminal services for Windows is the Windows display API.
I frequently must access a Win2K machine running on our local net in another building. My desktop machine was RedHat9. I gave up on TightVNC 1.2.6 because it could never get the screen updates correct: the most correct part of the screen was a tiny zone just around the mouse cursor. I had to drag the mouse around the screen, essentially repainting the screen manually. Updating to TightVNC 1.2.7 when it became available did not help.
I changed to RealVNC 4.0 on both ends and the screen update problems went away. It worked really well and was very fast.
My desktop machine is now Suse 9.1, the default VNC viewer is 1.2.9. On the Win2K side, I've still got RealVNC 4.0. The two versions don't seem to much like each other - while the screen update problems are not as severe as they were, there are still problems. It's slow enough to watch the order of the screen updates and, on occasion, it's a couple pixels off. Sometimes icon images never get drawn at all, just an outline shows.
One thing that I really liked about RealVNC 4.0 that I do not have with TightVNC 1.2.9 is ability to change the PC's screen resolution without losing the connection. TightVNC 1.2.9 disconnects while RealVNC 4.0 has no problems.
I should install RealVNC 4.0 on the Suse machine, but honestly, I'd rather work on making the Win2K machine just go away...
-K Lars Lohn
I just started using a new app called Bosco's Screen Share. It was way easier than any VNC system I've tried and performance is pretty good. The best part is that it's easy for my Mom and Dad, so I can help them easier with their computer problems while I'm at school. Last year, things would fester on my Mom's computer until the weekend. Bosco is $30, discounted to $20 until they finish 1.0.
I use VNC daily for admin on a large number of servers and desktops across Europe. Regardless of VNC flavour I'd be lost without fastpush, which allows me to push a vnc install onto a machine that doesn't have it installed (or reset the password if I don't know it). It supports various VNC flavours and configurable options.
Another (though not free) app I've discovered is helpdeskvnc. This allows someone to make the connection to my server, but gives me control over their desktop. This means someone who is behind a nat/firewall can connect to a vnc server on my DMZ but I can control their machine. Which is immensely useful if they're at home behind a software firewall/broadband router and their VPN client isn't working.
Slightly off topic, but relevant. :)
At work we're required to use windows because of the proprietary software we use. Not much choice there. I have vnc on all the machines so I can hop to any from my office. I installed ultravnc on my computer and the server and an older version of realvnc on all the clients. I set ultra to require user and pass to connect and the older version of realvnc can't handle user and pass, just pass.
This way I can vnc from my computer or the server out to the network but nobody can connect from their machine to mine or the server. Just in case someone gets the password it won't matter because the vnc client on their computer can't connect to the server, only accept connections. They still can connect to another user though, but I don't really care about that. Everyone has only user access so they can't do much.
Of course this means I can vnc the boss' computer but he can't vnc me.
I recently posted a list of the VNC's in debian, with a description of how each one serves a different purpose to LUGOD's vox-tech mailing list. The post is quoted here in full, so that you do not need to click the link, thereby slashdotting their server.
I was asked "Is there one implementation that's better than the others? Why did this piece of software fork so many times?"
And I answered as follows:
Because they're all different. Some for framebuffers, some serve differently, some compressed, some not. Read on, and I think you'll getthe idea.
(Search packages.debian.org for vnc, and you'll see all of these pop up.)
TightVNC uses JPEG or zlib to compress the data stream to optimize for lower bandwidth connections. It is under the GPL. Packages: tightvncserver, and xtightvncviewer
The default VNC viewer (packages vncserver and xvncviewer) are (c) 2002 RealVNC, and (C)1994-2000 AT&T. They are under the GPL. This seems to be
what you alien'ed.
x2vnc - use a vnc server as a second screen, so you can move the mouse between the local machine and a machine across the network that is running the vnc client.
directvnc - doesn't require x - uses libdirectfb-0.9-20. Depends on zlib and libjpeg, so it may work with tightvnc's protocol
svncviewer - depends on svgalib
x11vnc - the x11vnc server works the same way the Windows 2000 vnc server does - mirroring the physical screen over vnc
linuxvnc - "With linuxvnc you can export your currently running text sessions to any VNC client. So it can be useful, if you want to move to another computer without having to log out and if you've forgotten to attach a 'screen' session to it, or to help a distant colleague to solve a problem."
3dwm-vncclient - I think you get the picture
vnc-java - I think you know what this is. Why bother with it? Probably so you can serve yourself a vnc client over HTTP, probably.
tkvnc - a wrapper for xvncviewer
I just inherited a shop using UltraVNC on Windoze. I switched them to RealVNC, because UltraVNC didn't work if the user was logged off. I particularly need to be able to access peoples PCs remotely when they're not using it. It might have been an old version or an option I didn't have time to find, but you'll want to find out for sure before going with UltraVNC or one of the others.
I prefer MetaVNC as it is a "window aware" VNC, and allows a gnome desktop, for example, to coexist with a Windows desktop.
by Anon
a se/Ea syVNC/vnc-4.0-unixsrc.unix-socket-attaching.2004-1 0-17.patch
a se/Ea syVNC/README.unix-socket-attaching.2004-10-18.txt
Try EasyVNC?
EasyVNC, is an VNC system with the features that got the idea from the "screen" program of creating/attaching its sessions in a convenient way.
There's also the SSL ability which is an by-product feature.
Those features, now, only support on UNIX system.
There's EasyVNC patch over RealVNC v4.0 at,
http://linux.thai.net/plone/Members/ans/rele
The following is some paragraph from EasyVNC README at,
http://linux.thai.net/plone/Members/ans/rele
This patch for realvnc is aimed to have some features in communicating
RFB protocol via a unix socket file. Communicating this way is useful to
create VNC application with a behavior like a program called "screen". With
these features, it can be further developed to be easy to use as the windows
terminal service (or remote desktop protocol (RDP)) system. These features
also introduce a new approach to implement ssl support on RFB (by now, only
support on UNIX system) without any ssh tunneling.
Posted by Anon
:displayNum"
Summarization from EasyVNC README.
Strong point
============
The benefit of this connection paradigm (the connection via unix socket) are,
1. Secure connection
2. Secure authentication
3. Centralize authentication
4. Trust the session owner
5. Convenient to creat/attach session
6. Future direction : a VNC session manager, or a behavior as the basic user-oriented behavior of the windows terminal service
Note: The item 4, 5, and 6 have some concepts alike to the concept of the
"screen" program.
Weak point
==========
1. Only work on a UNIX-like system
2. No HTTP connection
Future work
===========
1. Implement the win32 client to support "auto/" and "ssh/" transport.
2. Implement VNC session manager to list all existing session upon connect.
Something that has the basic user-oriented behavior like
the windows terminal service may be implemented.
3. Add to "vncviewer", the ability to pass some "Xvnc" specific options such
as, "-geometry", "-depth", etc.
EasyVNC Transport Type
======================
The following is the summary of "vncviewer" transport type.
$ vncviewer -h
VNC viewer for X version 4.0 - built Oct 13 2004 19:26:34
Copyright (C) 2002-2004 RealVNC Ltd.
See http://www.realvnc.com for information on VNC.
usage: vncviewer [parameters] [transport/][host:displayNum] [parameters]
vncviewer [parameters] -listen [port] [parameters]
The transport can be one of tcp, unix, stdio, ssh, or auto (default=auto)
tcp/[host:displayNum] - The conventional transport type
unix/:unixSocketPath - The path to unix socket to connect and establish
the RFB protocol
stdio/:commandLine - Connect to the RFB protocol via the standard
input/output of this command line
ssh/[[user@]host:displayNum] - Something like
stdio/:"ssh user@host vncserver -attach
auto/[[[user@]host]:displayNum] - Auto detect
CreateSession - Create new VNC session, if the requested session does not
exist (default=0)
Can anyone point me in the right direction for a SSH server for Windows to use with one of these VNC programs?
Or if there are other ways to run one of the GPL VNC programs to securely control Windows 2000 servers?
I like the fact that the UltraVNC says it supports AD authentication; the others seem to have one or two local passwords only, ugh. Seems like that would be a nightmare if you have multiple admins. Loose accountibility. What about the logging capablities? Good or bad?
I don't like that UltraVNC is "Project Status: Final Beta Testing for v1.0.0". Risking server security on beta products is not good.
One final question if you've read this far - Anyone deploy any one of these programs to a large amount of Windows clients successfully? Any caveats or regrets in doing so? Did you feel comfortable that this was a secure way to provide Remote Admin and User Help funtionality?
Thanks.
why use vnc? ssh -X blahblah And you can use a windows X-client for windows apps... Can't remember the name, but they exist, and that works well.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
I use both UltraVNC and RealVNC at work and around the house.
UltraVNC is miles ahead of the others when used with the video driver on Windows on a broadband or better connection. It is smooth, very usable for most office applications. Personally, I find file transfer to be useful too. The client side has some nice GUI touches for fullscreen mode - a little control bar that is very similar to the one in Remote Desktop.
On the other hand, RealVNC is the "gold standard". The stable releases are extremely stable. Of note, in version 4, there is a nice GUI for limiting remote access by IP address.
It is worth emphasizing that there is a vast difference between RealVNC on Linux and on Windows. Because of the nature of OSS, on Linux, VNC doesn't need to screen scrape. On Windows, w/o a special video driver (a la UltraVNC), VNC is generally stuck with a high-tech version of screen scapeing - it's slow, innacurate, and generally unpleasant for "work", but still incredibly valuable for the flexibilty of remote access.
I ran into this problem with RealVNC a week or so ago. I left my home system remoted in to my work computer for an entire day. It chewed through more than 9GB just in VNC data.
Something to watch, as beyond a certain level of throughput (ie. quite usable) it is largely redundant jamming more data down the pipe (and it costs $$$)
Early on, the VNC team made a dissatrous decision to be ``policy neutral'' about security. This terrible decision remains predominant today in all implementations of VNC. The concrete result is that users (a) have to add extra options to get secure connections, they have a VNC variant that supports them at all, and (b) are able to start a non-secured vnc server, effectively poking an authentication security hole through the entire machine. On student machines, this is even an issue when -localhost is used, so firewalling is insufficient. In my lab, we simply refuse to run vnc-server on any of our machines, because the security implications are unacceptable. It's a shame, because it's a great tool. What really worries me is that the many proliferations of VNC have all propagated this error to new implementations. Apparently we did not learn this lesson with telnet.
Because the VNC team did not define any standard, common security protocols for VNC, the people who distribute vncserver are now stuck with a problem. They can either secure the server, breaking compatibility with the majority of VNC clients, or they can perpetuate the insecurity, making VNC an unacceptably risky install for administrators.
If the wrong thing is possible, many users will do it. If the wrong thing is default, then to first order all users will do it. The position of the VNC team on this issue was extremely irresponsible.
And yes, I know about VNC over ssh. In my experience, PhD students can't work out how to set up the tunneling on windows, never mind my mom. The objective is to solve the problem for people like my mom. VNC needs to behave reasonably in the hands of a non-expert.
Jonathan S. Shapiro (The EROS Guy)
What would be the best layout for a windows2000 or windows XP computer connecting to a linux based server?
These windows machines at work have remote desktop installed on them, but nothing else can be installed. My linux machine at home can have anything installed.
Can remote desktop connect to a vnc server?
TightVNC is pretty good both on a LAN and over long range IP connections. You can tweak it's compression options to get some nice performance. Plus, it has nice scaling to view larger displays on a lower-res host. If you're going from a unix box to a windows box though, i'd recommend using radmin and the built in windows terminal services. It has way better performance than the win32 vnc server.
Ultr@VNC is the clear choice for Windows VNCing. It interoperated with all the other VNCs, includes the Tight compression (among others), has all kinds of cool features (that, granted, you really wouldn't need under *nix, but they're nice to have in Windows). It's what I use to troubleshoot all of my clients' servers and workstations. The ones running Windows that is.
It's Cmd-Q, not Alt-F4, you insensitive clod! Jeez...
X11 is much smoother.. because it's a major network hog.. very chatty. VNC isn't great, but it's a decent hack. Try runnin X11 over DSL... ick. VNC over SSH is more usable.
Somebody needs to create a decent ICA knockoff that sends graphic device primitives without being so fat.
You want a remote UI? How about running X against an OS that does not run the UI in ring 0? VNC, feh. Just another kludge trying to make windows viable outside the singleton computer deployment.
Remain calm! All is well!
that immediately echoes what I type to my screen. All the programs out there send my keystrokes in a round trip. That's ridiculous.
Good coverage of exactly how Microsoft 'helped' Citrix in the thin-client market, and probably really helped thin-client Linux...
UltraVNC can be run if the user is logged off, if it is run as a service. That's the only way RealVNC can do it, too.
If that weren't the case, you wouldn't be able to perform Windows system software updates that require reboots using UltraVNC, which of course you can. Just enable the server to run as a system service. It would have been easier and faster to do than downgrading back to RealVNC.
if you require access to the machine at boot time (IE: if your windows doesn't boot anymore, or you need to GRUb into another kernel) maybe these are useful:
http://www.realvnc.com/products/KVM-via-IP/
http://www.xceedium.com/html/products/Net_KVM.php
These toys are super sweet, but uber expensive if you are not SuperGigaUltraCorp Inc.
Anyone know of a more budget appliance? or something Homebrew ?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Clearly this software doesn't exist, and the image is a marketing mock-up.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Does anyone know of a VNC option to send a single window across on the VNC client (similar to how remote X sessions work?)
I read about a patch for this sent to a VNC mailing list years ago to do this, but I haven't seen any of the current VNCs do this.
Also, I recall some VNC (TightVNC? UltraVNC) had an option to use a non-open source "Video mirror driver" that sped up screen updates. Anyone know of a similar open-source driver?
funny thing is .. its only one compaq pcs. p3 450 deskpros all the way up to p4 hp-compaqs. never on ibm pl or gl series tho. only compaq.
ps. this is a troll, mod it as such
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
I haven't tried it extensively, but there's another VNC that derived from UltraVNC called MetaVNC.
You may want to check this out too.
I know this is a linux oriented site, but nothing beats Windows remote desktopping. It's encrypted and can use local printers, diskdrives, and serial ports. Most importantly, it just works.
I miss anything?
Yes.
i'd like the windows machines to start a secure server automatically, without extra windows in the taskbar (as putty requires, i think?)...
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Radmin is tight. When on a LAN, you can bump the settings up to 65,535 colors and change the refresh rate up to 300-400 per second, and it's great. Obviously over long distances it's better to use lesser settings, but I have been using radmin for a while and it's great with it's telnet, file transfer, shutdown, watch and full control features.
It uses way less processor time than the other solutions (tested RealVNC and TightVNC without the driver), and is fast - with the emphasis on fast. If it weren't for my measle 54Mbit bandwidth, I could easily view video remotely without a glitch.
The transfer files option in the new (development 3) TightVNC is also useful, albeit a bit buggy still.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
It's a window-aware VNC app, I'm about to install it and see if it lives up to it's hype...
http://metavnc.sf.net/
Comments welcome.
Note that Tivoli looks suspiciously like a fork of RealVNC.
I use RealVNC on an almost daily basis for customer support over broadband connections and find it to be more reliable than the Ultra or Tight versions. Some of the added functionality such as file transfer would certainly be nice to have, but not so much so that Id sacrifice stability for it. I havent tried TridiaVNC so I couldnt say about that one.
I have used xf4vnc, which loads as a module into your X server. That makes it really fast. Plus it supports GLX.
http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
The nice thing about UltraVNC is that it has a chat and file transfer facility built in, which is extremely helpful when helping someone on remote, and with the video driver even dialup is useful. I wish it had a Linux counterpart that would take those extra facilities.
;-).
...
As for Linux use, any of them will do. I've tried VNC from Win to Linux and vice versa, and have used x2x, win2vnc and x2vnc as well (a must try if you have a desktop AND laptop
Now, if we could only get that middle mouse button to work
Insert
Responding to your sig: "PromiseUltra100CardOfDeath"
We had perhaps 10 Promise controllers, and could not make them work under Windows XP. They work fine under Windows 98.
It is possible that Microsoft has done something to make software/hardware RAID controllers like Promise fail under Windows XP. That would mean more people would buy Windows Server. We tried another software/hardware RAID mirroring controllers, from HighPoint, and they had the same problem.
We also were not able to get any meaningful technical support from Promise Technology, even after months of asking.
Apple's Remote Desktop is a great solution.
I have started to use it to troubleshoot client's computers remotely.
It also uses standard SQL type reporting for it's database - so the data is actually transferrable between Macs, PCs, and Linux.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I tested this crack with WinVNC 3.3.3 r9, RealVNC 3.3.7, and RealVNC 4.0. They are all vulerable.
./vncrack -h target.host.com -w wordlist.txt [-opt's] ./vncrack -C /home/some/user/.vnc/passwd ./vncrack -Wo rd ors word
Here is the web site:
http://www.phenoelit.de/vncrack/
Here is the documentation:
For the moment, I will put here just the stuff from usage() and some comments:
Online:
Passwd:
Windows interactive mode:
enter hex key one byte per line - find it in
\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ORL\WinVNC3\Passw
\HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\ORL\WinVNC3\Pas
Options for online mode:
-v verbose
-d N Sleep N nanoseconds between each try
-D N Sleep N seconds between each try
-a Just a funny thing
-p P connect to port P instead of 5900
-s N Sleep N seconds in case connect() failed
-R NWait N seconds when you got blocked
Options for challange/response intercepted by PHoss:
-c Copy and paste from PHoss
-r Copy and paste from PHoss
In Windoze interactive mode, you are prompted for 8 lines of 2-digit hex data. This looks like this:
2F
98
1D
C5
48
E0
9E
C2
You may use 'echo -e "AF\nFE\n..."' for this task and pipe it in VNCrack. It is the stuff you find in the registry keys.
The decryption of files and Registry key is fast, since the key is known.
Version stuff: This proggy replys to the server's version message with bouncing back the same one. But I suspect this program will not work with major versions greater then 3.3.
On Win2k Server (the only Win2k with Remote Desktop/Terminal Services), Remote Desktop allows two RDP "sessions" plus the local console. No provision is made to EVER remote-control the console session. Remote sessions are limited to Administrator users.
/console and remote the console 0 session itself, if you so desire. This is optional.
/server:COMPUTERNAME) to shadow the console session of a logged-in user and leave them logged in and able to control the session as you do with PCAnywhere/VNC. This must be done from an existing Remote session (good for remoting to a customer's server, then shadowing a desktop to work on things). There is a Group Policy setting (SP2 ADMs, folks) that lets you set permissions-requirements, so the user is not required to ALLOW you to do this.
On Win2k3 Server, as in Win2k, you are limited to two simultaneous RDP sessions, but you are now able to
These two above are _without_ having purchased any Terminal Services CALS or any additional software.
Finally, with WinXP SP2, it is entirely possible to configure (via a registry setting) the OS to allow a RDP session separate from the console 0 session. There is significant discussion over the topic of if this feature made it into SP2 release, or was pulled in late beta. I can say that I have seen it work on a SP2 release system. There may be specific caveats such as the PC not being in a domain, and having "Fast User Switching" enabled (as the one, peculiar PC where this happened to me would have been configured), but the functionality is definitely there.
Finally with regards to WinXP, given another system, it is possible to use the command-line shadow command (ex. shadow 0
The point is that there is much more to the Remote Desktop remote administrator and XP RDC functionality than meets the eye if you merely click the icon.
"Oh no... he found the
It just came to me vnc allows you to do remote dual screens that are usable locally too.
You'd take a linux box with two screens, and on each screen run an x server which nests a vnc session on the same box, then you'd use x2x to connect the two vnc sessions together into one large screen.
Then, if you wanted to see it remotely, you'd go to another dual screen box and open up remote vnc sessions to the two different screen's sessions. If you moved the mouse it would tunnel itself through the x2x link on the remote machine, and your mouse would jump screens.
Ofcourse, that setup wouldn't allow dragging windows from one screen to the next, and performance on the second screen would probably be abysmal because of all the roundtrips, but you can't have everything you know.
Additionally, if you replaced the x2x with x2vnc you could do it with one linux box and one windows box.
I used to run x2x between different machines to make them behave like a single dual screen machine, but I never tried doing it remotely within vnc sessions.
If your version of Windows supports Remote Desktop that is a very nice solution. Microsoft really nailed it with Remote Desktop. How come other packages aren't that response?
Cos that's what x2vnc likes best.
...an Englishman in London.
...who responded first as Pinky to the AKAImBatman's Brain quote (which BTW is not exactly correct in word order placement, but is close enough).
I'm not 12 years old. I am 43 and I will *NEVER* grow up, for when you "grow up" your heart dies.
I've been using the doesn't-work-with-Gnome and crashes-under-Emacs Cygwin version. We use it at work to connect to the Linux servers running RedHat AS. Due to limitations and stability problems with Cygwin XFree86, we're now looking at VNC solutions.
So if there is a good, free X server for Windows, I'd like to know where to find it.
and it beats all the other remote programs hands down!
If anyone knows about security it's the EROS guy!
I am suprised no one has mentioned VNCon. I use it, with RealVNC and it works excellent.
I have been using Remote Administrator for a few years now. http://www.famatech.com/
The installation is small (around 3MB I think), and it is very fast. I have deployed it on every machine I service in the field (about 30, across Canada), and have no complaints.
For $35 USD for the regular licence (1 server, 1 client), you cannot go wrong. I can even load and play (horribly, horribly slow mind you) many DirectX games. Yes, they look like crap, but I can do it!
They have a new version out, and I have been using the new Viewer program. Absolutely wonderful. Well organized, small, and extremely fast. You can Control, View, Telnet, File Transfer, or Reboot/Shutdown the server you are connecting to.
It also supports integration with Window NT/2000 User Authentication.
Hope it helps, Daryl
AOL User says "Me too!"
Is there something that does resolution scaling for the PPC or do you guys thing I'm out of luck?
I'm using a Dell Axim X3i (Integrated WLAN card).
We've got Radmin deployed on over 300 clients. It's stable, it's bloody fast, and (AFAICT) it's secure. In a domain environment you can set it up so that it will only allow members of a certain group to perform certain actions (view, control, telnet, file transfer, shutdown) and it's very granular.
Additionally, it repackages well into an MSI installer that you can roll out with Group Policy to your newly-formatted PCs.
I highly recommend it.
--
The trouble with pedants is that they're always right.
I use it for transferring files as well. The beta hasnt crashed for me in the past 3 months.
The biggest difference i find between remote desktop and VNC (i use Real) is that remote desktop actually starts a seperate login session, different to the one actually visible on the monitor. It tends to be more stable and have more accurate video, HOWEVER if you want to control what is actually on the monitor in the current windows session, VNC is the answer. I use it to drive presentations (video and powerpoint) on a PC connected to a projector, from the back of the presentation room. Very handy - also good if you want to show someone how to fix something on their PC.
Don't you think that's one of the most important things the developer would put in?
Every remote control package I've ever used has had the ability to send Ctrl+Alt+Del to the connected machine by one way or another; menu, special key combo, etc...
--
The trouble with pedants is that they're always right.
These choices are great and all, but in my experience I've found very poor multi-monitor support. Some authors speak of running multiple daemons for each screen -- screw that.
I've found that RealVNC (and NOT UltraVNC) has excellent multi-monitor support that gives you a view that spans across all monitors.
However, the beauty is in the fact that you can use the superior UltraVNC client to connect to the multi-monitor supporting RealVNC.
What other experiences have others had with multi-monitor across some of the VNCs I haven't tried, such as TightVNC?
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
To me, the automatic connection type detection feature of UltraVNC is killer. (I don't know which is the best protocol for my connection!)
:(
Another killer feature (which TightVNC also has) is the ability to scale to any size. This allows you to scale a 1280x1024 VNC screen so that you can see the whole remote desktop on a local 1024x768 display.
Lastly, being able to change the remote resolution without losing the connection is nice. I don't think TightVNC can do this.
Chicken of the VNC is good for Mac, but doesn't have these features.
Are there any good VNC or VNC'ish type clients that run on Windows (2k and XP) AND are usable over a dialup (56k) connection? We're currently running Altiris w/ carbon copy, it's so god awful slow it's un-usable. I'm not real concerned about encryption, as they are already coming in through a VPN.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
Remote desktop doesn't work the same way as VNC -- it requires a separate login and user account. It doesn't actually let you control the session of currently logged in user, which is what I usually do, so I can access programs that I leave running.
UltraVNC - it has NT Domain and Active Directory based security built in. It you are using windows workstations this is far better than the password management in other VNC's.
http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/mslogon1.htm
I hate surfing and chatting through the corporate firewall. They've got sniffers going and they keep tabs on us, so I'd rather not share my personal info with them. Here's what I do:
;)
On Home Computer:
1. Get a no-ip.com address (virtual domain name)
2. Configure SSH to listen on port 23
3. Configure TightVNC (good enough for my needs... stable and fast enough) to listen on loopback
4. Configure my router to forward port 23 to my server - NOT port 5800/5900 (vnc)
On Work Computer:
1. SSH into my home box on port 23, forwarding port 5800/5900
2. At work, connect to my vnc system at home by connecting to 'localhost'.
I can even connect to two separate systems. For example, my home machine is windows, and I also have a separate linux box on its own DSL connection at the office. Windows VNC is on 5900, Linux VNC is on 5901, so I can be connected to both via SSH (port 23) and have two VNC windows open at the same time.
They can all be answered by "it depends." The OP never gives enough specifics to clarify just exactly criteria by which to evaluate a given solution. Moronic refrains like "most secure" and "least hassle" are meaningless.
Yes, I've had a bad week. My A/C compressor at home decided to fry some wires and our house was almost 90F by 5p.m. (record highs in Texas this October). Feh!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Net Meeting allows very simular connection to Terminal Services aka RDC (Remote Desktop sharing) aka Citrix. It's not exactly the same, but it works well.
i on s/zenfamily65_mm.html
Novell Zenworks also provides a real nice remote control piece.
http://www.novell.com/partners/quicktrain/solut
. . . does anyone else get that? Change the resolution, either inadvertently b/c some user has a screensaver which runs in a different resolution than their desktop, or on purpose b/c a user has their res set at something unusable like 800x600, and then you have to reconnect? I get this running realvnc. Is there a vnc flavor that doesn't do this? If so, I'll switch to it in a heartbeat.
From UltraVNC's old FAQ Ultr@VNC is an enhanced VNC distribution, for Win32 platforms only (for now). It's based on RealVNC, features TightVNC smart cursor handling and encoding, almost all the special functionalities that can be found in eSVNC and Vdacc-VNC, and a LOT more.
Plus, at the time it was the only one with 128 bit encryption (via a plug-in) and still might be. The encryption not only protects the data in transit, it also acts as a second password. You can run the others through SSH, but the plug-in makes in integrated into UltraVNC.
Also, RealVNC now charges for their best version.
I've been using UltraVNC for a couple months after using real and tight vnc's for the past few years. So far I am extremely pleased with it as it provides some features like chatting with the desktop you are remotely accessing and file transfer that I don't see in other free VNC implementations.
Oh, and the girl on the website has no influence over this posting (or my wife would kill me:)
If you don't mind spending a little money, RAdmin is really good.Its light weight, works perfect over slow connections and works beautifully over lans or wans.One of our systems is completely dependent upon RAdmin becaue our gateway is in America and we are in India.
We use RAdmin to connect to it and run it as a service on the Win2k Server.Without it we'd be really dead.So far it performed much better than any other VNC, we've tried WinVNC and UltraVNC.
Lord of the Binges.
I know it's not technically a VNC client, but what are your thoughts on Timbuktu? I've had success with it, and it certainly makes data transfer easier (something that is clearly beyond the scope of VNC).
Ultra VNC would let me map my right ALT key as my META key... with other VNC clients, I cannot use my ESC key, which as any Emacs user knows, is the most important key in Emacs. It's frustrating to have your hand travel aaaaaaaaall the way up to the left upper corner to do simple things like auto-complete (META-/) !!! But Ultra VNC was unstable for me...that reminds me, I should try the latest version.
i tried it while i was hunting for good vnc, and tridia now keeps spamming my email. currently i use tightvnc.
Yes, it sucks, don't use it.
I only use it to configure the print server, I then isntall all my pritners lcoally by IP, and screw the HP software entirely.
Fixes all of the above problems, you can print to it via RDP or VNC with out any problems. Also allows you to use the printer over a VPN connection (which sounds silly, but sometimes you just have to print somehting)
The trick is to rememebr, ther is no
Son of a bitch. That didn't take long. The Troll GOP Moderators have camped out on our discussion thread and are just waiting for us to post another message so they can mod it down too. Figures.
I've done that before, just to see what would happen... and yes, it managed to lock both machines up solid. HOWEVER.... easy to fix. Simply remove the network cable, after a bit both machines will realize the connection dropped and act as though they disconnected normally. Hook up the cable again, and tada! All better!
(Alt-F4 was not working, due to the machines both being locked.)
Does nayone know a flavor or pre-packaged Linux distro that can serve up many user's login sessions over VNC?
We found x11vnc to be the fastest server on our solaris setup... it works pretty well in linux as well. Also has the advantage some don't have of hooking into the active console nicely. Registering it into inetd to fire off automatically makes for a nice on demand system...
Each has its own merits.. one isnt 'best'..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Having never tried any VNC stuff whatsoever, I put UltraVNC (server) on my WinXP box and ChickenOfTheVNC (client) on my iMac (10.3.5), and in 30 seconds was connected and running just fine. There was noticeable lag in video updating, which I expected given a) wireless network, and b) trying to run VPinMAME :-) .
The only thing in the whole procedure that surprised me (never RTFM of course) was that UltraVNC got its own IP address, not the one belonging to the WinXP machine itself.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Several months ago I tested several remote desktop solutions for Unix. Included in the list were various free VNC products. In the end I found that plain old XForwarding over SSH had by far the best smoothness and response time. Currently I use Cygwin's XWin.exe for the client end when I'm on a Win32 based system. On the server side, the only thing required (in OpenBSD) was to set 'X11Forwarding yes' in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. That's it! Of course using a light GUI like fluxbox also helps.
We found that the Promise controllers would sometimes work, also. The ATA100 controllers worked better than the newer ones for us. However, the 10 controllers together were the most unreliable hardware part I've ever seen.
The problems were only with controllers that had the hard drive with the boot partition.
on my machine realVNC has issues when someone else has logged in, seems it only attaches the service program to 1 user account. does ultra have the same problem?
I use TightVNC and Radmin, here's why.
My systems have to be running 24/7
They are EPGs.
For windows RADMIN is the best. period. Because it works well on windows 9x and NT/XP/2000/2003 without fancing optimizations required. The bad thing about Radmin is that it doens't work behind NAT. second in speed, behind RDP only.
File trasfer is very nice.
TightVNC is the second best and I use it to support lots of my clients, becuase of a killer VNC feature. Reverse Conection. Behind NAT they can connect to may VNC client Listening, and then I can control their machines and do my work.
And is a very small download 200kb, with an exe an one dll.
RealVNC doesn't have Tight, so using modem or ADSL it's only usable with 8 bit colors. but is''ok with 8bit, and supports reverse.
TridiaVNCPro 1.5
Slow VNC, but supports multiple monitors.
UltraVNC
Buggy, Too heavy, but ambitious.
Tihgtvnc works better and it's smaller, with less dlls.
RDP, is the fastest on windows but being M$ is too integrated, limited, and buggy, I would trust it, and I don't. on XP it disconnects the current user, on 2000/2003 it forks another user, is a mess, they always make things more complicated than necessary.
I'm not sure if gets the same image quality of Radmin and Timbuktu, using 16 bit.
PCanywhere 11 is interesting supports dialup and DUAL MONITORS, a very rare feature.
A little bloated but has it uses.
Laplink has lots of options, the anywhere is like gotomypc, a demon running on your pc, even behind NAT connects to a server and gives you control of your computer using a web browser, very powerful, but monthly charges, so I don't use it. But some people do. I think it is based on VNC.
Gotomypc faster than Laplink anywhere, and has a very small client. Probably the best commercial version, but monthly payment.
Timbuktu 5 Pro
Works on dialup and is very good LAN, very good image quality and speed.
Has a chat, and intercom(never worked for me)
Very interesting, check it out.
Remotely Anywhere
http://www.remotelyanywhere.com/
Very interesting, has a concept of being conected to a host, that a think may be an option to work behind NAT and monitor your pcs behind a firewall.
Has a very small client, 80kb. A little complicated to setup. I'm still studying it.
ControlIT (Computer Associates CA)
Has chat, and a very cool way to record your session.
But is buggy, not stable, and too much integrated in the system. Too many conflicting dlls and versions.
It's fast, works on dialup and IPX too.
Others
NetOP Dan Soft 7.5
Laplink Gold 12 (non tested yet)
PC DUO
http://contiki-demo.sics.se/
Tried both RealVNC and TightVNC and the "original" won at least in a LAN environment. But that was just a 15 minute test so I can't comment on performance over the crummy internet "nephos" aka cloud. (OK, friends in Greece, you know the other meaning - especially if like me you live in Athens...). I got the impression that TightVNC didn't understand mouse wheel events properly though, so if you use the mouse as if you're there maybe the orig is better.
The other guys will fix it if people scream, so there's a good chance that the answer you get from
slashdot will be wrong *tomorrow* !!!
(entropy you see always roules )
Short question to VNC exports:
which one was the latest version which didn't special-code with the Alt/meta key?
Longer story:
the special-coding that apparently both tightvnc and realvnc introduced works fine - when I actually use a keyboard. But I send x11 events to a VNC window and that does not work.
So which version would be the last one to treat the ALT/Meta key normally?
And would I need to downgrade the client, the server, either or both?
Of course, if you can offer a programming solution to simulate the Alt key modifier when sending x11 keystroke or mouse events, that would work even better.
Thanks!
RealVNC: the original.
TightVNC: optimized for low-bandwidth
Ultra: tons of extras - file transfer, chat, video driver, NT/AD security
Tridia: get around firewalls, more management features
I miss anything?
Win2VNC: One virtual desktop across two computers, using kbd/mouse of Win2VNC machine to run both(even does copy/paste correctly between screens if you use a good modern server like Ultra.) BTW: I've been told that the Win2VNC link I posted above has been superseded by a new version that adds support for mouse wheels, Alt-Tab, and other useful stuff. You can find it at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win2vnc/ Caveat: I haven't tried this one yet, but you can bet I will when I get a chance...
X2VNC: Same thing, but "master" desktop (the one with the shared kbd/mouse) is on a Unix box.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Mine didn't crash Both Firefox and Opera What operating system are you running? :)
The client built into KDE is pretty nice too.
What? The guy didn't say what platform he was talking about.
Actually, in Windows XP Professionsl, the Remote Desktop connection will connect you to your desktop, not create a new one. This means, whatever you had running will now be available in your session, and your desktop's console becomes locked. Once you unlock your console, you once again see the same desktop.
It's actually pretty nice, it's fast, it supports drive, sound, and serial port mapping too. Can't ask for much else.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I understand the question, but a more important one would be "why in the name of god do we have now 123 different VNCs?"
This is just confusing the heck out of me.
One better for speed, another for CPU, a third for OS/2, why? Why can't we merge the best of the best in a one and only VNC?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
The more the merrier. Any other takers?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
here.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
and also a really badly Photoshopped picture of some keys on a keyboard - the letters' perspective distortion doesn't match the keys *at all*.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
The one I use the most at the moment is something that comes with Xandros (http://xandros.com) called remote desktop viewer. Obviously a renamed but cool version of vnc. It hooks to all versions of vnc and scales my 1600 x 1200 desktop onto the 1024x768 laptop I use when not at the office. I have no trouble with it but it keeps people from reading over my shoulder cause no-one else I have shown it to can read anything that small. We also use tight vnc and original (realvnc) on different set ups. I think though Xandros did it best. You don't have to press to send special keys, in full view there is a small title bar that can be set to autohide and so you get the whole screen but can still get out without finger calistenix. I th9nk it originated with kde.
X11 is faster... as long as you are on a FAT pipe
isn't that what the original post said?
too many morons
I had been using RealVNC as my VNC server on my WinXP box. I switched to UltraVNC because this, and other posts suggested it.
;)
I can not say this loudly, or strongly enough do NOT switch to UltraVNC.
Most of the problems I have with UltraVNC have to do with resolution switching.
My PC is a arcade cabinet (mame), running a frontend called MAMEWAH. MAMEWAH removes all the window's features and shows itself fullscreen. UltraVNC will let me connnect to the machine while running MAMEWAH, but all my keyboard input is ignored. RealVNC worked just fine.
Also, when switching resolutions UltraVNC needs a kick in the pants to allow clients to reconnect. I can't simply reconnect using my VNC client, I have to go to the box and make some adjustments.
Lastly, Chicken of the VNC doesn't seem to like UltraVNC much at all. This could be Chicken's fault, but Chicken worked fine with RealVNC and every other VNC server I've ever tried. VNCThing (also on the Mac) liked UltraVNC a bit more but ran into numerous problems anyways.
So, I'm curious. Robustness or speed? I'm on a local network, so maybe UltraVNC's "performance boost" doesn't apply - because when UltraVNC did work, it didn't seem faster than RealVNC.
If I were you, I'd skip UltraVNC and stick with the Real Thing.
Joseph Elwell.
Lastly, Chicken of the VNC doesn't seem to like UltraVNC much at all. This could be Chicken's fault, but Chicken worked fine with RealVNC and every other VNC server I've ever tried.
Chicken works fine for me. Do you have the latest version?
I can't speak to resolution changes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I prefer to use WinSSHdhttp://www.bitvise.com/winsshd.html to create an SSH connection to my XP box and then use Remote Desktop through the SSH. Seems more secure to me and of course, I run the SSHd on an off the wall port so it's not in a normal scan. If you use the SP2 firewall, you don't have to have remote desktop or the 3389 port enabled, only the SSHd port that you have selected.
http://dont.spam.me.anymore.com