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?"

Comments

Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

> UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.

Since when does VNC have anything to do with mythological creatures?

Re:Obviously

[mebob]

the fact tat it says vnc or that they skewed it wrong?

Re:Obviously

[Martin Blank]

They also have a picture of a busted (or at least really seriously non-standard) keyboard. Your point?

Re:Obviously

[deglr6328]

Missing choice (you insensitive clods)! I only use microVNC! You know, for those times when you simply MUST remotely connect to the 8-bit microcontroller in your toaster when you're at work.

Re:Obviously

[bigtangringo]

Yeah but their keyboard is broken..

Re:Obviously

[netsharc]

Hmm, all three letters are at the bottom row of a keyboard, so they have even height. I think temporary rearranging a keyboard for a photo shoot shouldn't be hard..

Re:Obviously

[Jubii]

And.... she's bathed in a soothing green light. I'll give you two guesses on what website she's looking at on the screen!!

Re:Obviously

[TV-SET]

UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.

Now that was most probably the best software advertising campaign ever. I bet their website got more hits than ever before and probably will ever in the future.

Re:Obviously

[DAldredge]

No, if they used the only real keyboard on the planet, an IBM MODEL M, it would only take 6 seconds and require no retouching.

Re:Obviously

[secretsquirel]

smokedot.org?

Re:Obviously

[ForestGrump]

Dunno how accurate rotten.com library is...tho i take it as having some interesting reads.
There's no constitutional law against foreign-born nationals becoming Governor of California, of course, but there is certainly one against them becoming President of the United States. Article II, Section 1: "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States." This presents a problem for any presidential aspirations for Arnold.

But don't worry! Our fine lawmakers have made the occasional stab to remove this limitation out from under us.

In July of 2003, Senator Orrin Hatch introduced a proposed amendment to the constitution to allow anyone foreign born and a resident for twenty years to be eligible for the office of President. Hatch and Schwarzenegger are old friends, and it is widely held that this amendment was a favor, should the governorship turn out to be a potential stepping stone as it was for the previous actor.

Interestingly enough, Congressman Barney Frank introduced similar legislation in 2000 to remove the natural-born requirement from the presidental rules as well, citing the lack of opportunity given to people who have joined the country and shown throughout their lives to be fine citizens. And even more interesting are the following words between Representative Frank and one of the witnesses during the Judiciary Committee meeting in which the bill was killed, which we'll leave you thinking about:

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/a ct ors/arnold-schwarzenegger/'
Wikipedia also says arnold for president http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger

Grump
(and I didn't vote arnold for governor...but i like him more than shurb oil co)

Re:Obviously

[smacktits]

I just ordered one of them last night. Can't wait to see if it lives up to the hype, though anything would be better than the shitty Compaq keyboard I have at the moment :(

Re:Obviously

[johannesg]

Yeah, is that a girl for real? It doesn't have a horn on its forhead, on the sides or the center.

Seriously, it could be a girly-man. I've seen guys with similar haircuts and those eyebrow shadows are scary.

An apt post, for a man whose name means "TheVirgin" in Dutch...

Re:Obviously

[samjam]

matrix screensaver kicked in while the photographer was fiddling with his camera?

Sam

Re:Obviously

[DjReagan]

Replying to an off-topic comment doesn't make your comment any less off-topic.

Talking about constitutional reform with regards to who can run for President in the comments of an ask-slashdot about what is the best VNC server certainly is off-topic.

Deal.

(And yes, I know my reply to you is also off-topic. The difference is that I wont be bitching about it if I get moderated as such)

Re:Obviously

[ultranova]

Can 8-bit microcontrollers run a graphical user interface ? I mean, logically, one would be limited to 1 MB of memory, and that would be pretty little to put the application, GUI, and TCP/IP stack into...

Re:Obviously

[dave_f1m]

Logically an 8-bit microcontroller has 20 bits of address space?

Re:Obviously

[juergen]

You are double mistaken.

To address 1MB of memory, you would need a 20 bit wide address bus. Some 8-bit microcontrollers I know have even less (like 16, which amounts to 64KB of directly adressable memory).

And by your statment, MSDOS would never have been able to run networking and any application with a graphical interface in 640KB of total memory (and we remember, "noone is ever going to need more").

Jürgen

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, your post is about slashdot etiquette, and as such can not possibly be off-topic. Those who are moderating you down seem to be moderating you because you declared yourself off-topic, not because you really are.

Re:Obviously

[Reducer2001]

If I get really bored at work, I VNC into my machine at home and play CivIII. Works pretty good!

Re:Obviously

[Peridriga]

FYAD @ SA?

Re:Obviously

[simetra]

However, the TightVNC page shows 4 clean-cut geek type guys: www.tightvnc.com/people.html

They look like serious, studious fellows. Their work is obviously superior to that of others.

Re:Obviously

[Kehvarl]

Wait, she's bathing? Does that mean the website is NSFW?

Re:Obviously

[leshert]

Of course. We've been doing it for decades. But you're not going to do it programming in VB. You're going to have to learn how a computer works.

Historically, most of the late 8-bit machines had graphical environments available, even if they were rather primitive. The C64 had GEOS, the Atari 800 had (I think) GEM, and the Apple IIc had ProDOS (although it naturally worked better on the 16-bit IIgs). So yes, they did it even back then.

[As an aside, eight bits gets you 65k, not 1MB, naïvely. You can do bank-switching to get, oh, 512k or so.]

But that's way more than enough. You can easily fit a TCP/IP stack in a few k. You can easily have a graphical environment that doesn't require a massive screenbuffer (IIRC, the C64 screen buffer took 1000 BYTES... less than 1K. It's all in the encoding...).

Modern 8-bit mavens have the excellent Contiki project, which gives you an astounding amount of functionality in an 8-bit package, including everything you mention.

Re:Obviously

[binarytoaster]

That's not green, that's pink. Perhaps you mean the Gas Chamber. :)

Re:Obviously

[Fallen Andy]

Green Lantern right?
My favourite hero from DC comics (just because he wasn't the others...).

Re:Obviously

[bhtooefr]

Where did you order it from, and what version (the 42H1292, or the 1391401)? If it's the 42H or the Unicomp Customizer 101, the keys are damn good. Better than membrane, anyway... If it's the 139, it's going to be fucking awesome (except the 139 doesn't have the drain holes in the front, so don't spill crap in it). Oh, and if it is fucking awesome, the keys are removable for easy cleaning on both models ;-)

Re:Obviously

[smacktits]

I got it from here and it was the 1391401 :)

Re:Obviously

[bhtooefr]

You paid $40 for your Model M? I paid $1 for my 1391401, and $4 for my 42H (the person who got it for me didn't think to look to see if the PS/2 cable was damaged, and there were keys missing, but not the ones I was missing from my 139, so some got transplanted).

I don't care about collector's grade, just that It Works(tm).

Re:Obviously

[pen]

Slashdot 2 years ago? (Before the alternate color schemes.)

Re:Obviously

[peacefinder]

I'll see their Schwartzenegger and raise them an Albright.

Re:Obviously

[tambo]

UltraVNC [sourceforge.net] because their website has a picture of a girl.

That's a girl? Based on the severe shadows and the wicked eyebrows, I thought it was Satan.

Eh - women, spawn of evil... the difference is purely semantic, I guess. nm.

- David Stein

vino

[auzy]

vino's included in gnome 2.6 and uses the new xorg extensions making it very very fast

Re:vino

[Takehiko]

Correction, that's new to Gnome 2.8.

http://tuggy.home.sapo.pt/gnome/

Re:vino

[13Echo]

I think it still requires that you download a viewer though. Vino, as far as I am aware, is simply the server.

Re:vino

[fm6]

There's a great deal of truth in what you say!

Re:vino

[sremick]

I like how Vino lets me view my main desktop (screen :0 ) but I get a keystroke-repeat issue that I don't get with other servers, all else being equal. Seems to come up during moments of lag (this is over broadband though). No matter how slowly or carefully I'll type, occasionally keystrokes will be repeated (sometimes to insane lengths). IIIIIIttttt's haaaarrd to haavvve toooo correccccccctt stuffff like this all the timmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmme. :(

Re:vino

[LoudMusic]

vino's included in gnome 2.6 and uses the new xorg extensions making it very very fast

And it makes beer too!

Re:vino

[Gekke Eekhoorn]

Turn of the autorepeat in X.

Seriously. Use "xset -r".

The X keyboard stuff has autorepeat built in, for when your keyboard doesn't. Most keyboards have it, so it shouldn't be turned on to begin with.

When you press a key on the viewer side, the X server will, through vino, get a keypress event.
When you release the key, X gets a key release event.
If you take a "long" time between those two events, autorepeat kicks in.
Now suppose you have a slightly laggy connection, then the chance that, through network lag, those two events are separated becomes much higher.

See?

Now do me a favor and report that as a bug with the vino folks. When its running it should do xset -r.

Re:vino

[sremick]

I actually already tried xset -r. It doesn't help. When in a remote Vino session, it will still randomly repeat... although when I'm back at my desk, it's clear that the xset -r took effect because I can no longer hold down a key and get repeats when I desire them.

tightvnc vs. real vnc

[fozzy(pro)]

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.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[cbreaker]

Yea, me too. It's not fantastic, being VNC after all. But it works pretty well, good video quality over a slower connection too. TightVNS is stable too.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[dtfinch]

TightVNC works pretty well for me, with a few notable issues. I use it exclusively. But on occasion the display updates would just stop, and I'd have to restart the client. Also the client would occasionally crash with an error like unknown colorkey, I forgot the exact text. Using 1.2.9. Haven't checked the latest to see if the bugs have been fixed.

As for security, if you have it set to turn off wallpaper, it turns it off upon every connection attempt, before authentication. It's a pretty resource intensive action. I've been able to use this to DOS my home pc's, opening hundreds of connections. The system bogs down with a rapid flashing of the desktop reminiscent of the japanese seizure robots.

I suppose I should file bug reports for all these.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[slasher999]

Now I've found tight to be somewhat unstable on my Windows boxes - all XP or 2000. Tight seems to crash expecially when using "best" compression.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[dnoyeb]

I use tight on win2k and winxp across cable modem and local network. All across putty (SSH). Never crashed. Does choke up when network gets slow though and I think you have to restart the session sometimes, but its rare.

I just wish I knew how to cut and paste across the VNC to my local computer.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[tasinet]

Having only Windows boxes is one thing.
Admitting it for slashdot is just provoking...

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Monkey-Man2000]

If you're using all XP or 2000, why not use Remote Desktop? There's a really good linux client as well if that's the reason you were using VNC.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[atlantis191]

Because some of us have XP Home which does not have the Remote Desktop feature

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[DaHat]

As another poster pointed out, XP home does not have remote desktop.

To that I add the fact that 2k pro does not have it either (which is what I still use at home).

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[cerebis]

Now I've found tight to be somewhat unstable on my Windows boxes - all XP or 2000.

Read the sentence again; he said he uses it on his Windows machines, that doesn't require that he only has Windows machines. The "all XP or 2000" refers to what version those machines are using.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[scdeimos]

The RFB protocol (which VNC uses) has specified ServerCutText and ClientCutText messages since protocol version 3.3:
The RFB Protocol, v3.3

You just need to find server and client implementations that actually support it. :)

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[rapcomp]

What about NetMeeting? I use it on Win95,98,2000, and XP clients.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used a few different versions ("plain", tight, and ultra), and for Windows enviroments, I've stuck with UltraVNC. It's at least as fast as the other options, and is better suited to the Windows enviroment (allowing you to do things like send ctrl-alt-del to the remote machine), plus it has file transfer (over the existing VNC connection) an well as chat.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[gregeth]

Actually even with remote desktop, vnc can be much more beneficial in certain cases.

I work IT for a branch campus of a major university, and we use vnc all the time. Remote Desktop requires that the user be logged out, whereas vnc lets them see what you're doing. This is great for supporting people who call constantly and need to have their hand held to do anything.

We even setup a package that they can install that will put an icon on the desktop to run the server when they need help, and after which it opens a command window showing their IP info.

That way when someone calls, I just say, "Double click on so-and-so icon" and then just go merrily on my way.
Too bad the vncviewer's I've used in linux can't seem to be configured to lookup samba host information, that way I wouldn't need to know the IP (maybe it can, correct me if I'm wrong).

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[B747SP]

You just need to find server and client implementations that actually support it

Uhm, TightVNC supports it. Just cut, or paste at whichever end you need. Works fine for me. (I use TightVNC exclusively).

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[PurpleFloyd]

Aside from the fact that XP Home doesn't have remote desktop, there's a good reason why you might not want to use it. If you're using a Linux box as server, there's no way for X to serve a Windows remote desktop. That's a big problem in a mixed environment; it creates problems in support and deployment to run two protocols at once.

Also, since the Windows VNC clients these days have hooks into the video system, they run almost as well as MS's remote desktop on Windows - and almost all are cross-platform and Free as well. Windows' remote desktop capabilities are decent for simple administration across a LAN, but they aren't as useful in a large mixed environment. After all, you can run VNC with a Linux server and a Palm OS client; I challenge you to do that with a Windows remote desktop.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Daedalus-Ubergeek]

Actually, I believe XP Home does have Remote Desktop... Start > Programs > Accessories > Communication > Remote Desktop Connection.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[RiddleofSteel]

You can't do everything over Remote Desktop that you can with VNC. I've seen this first hand with the admin console for Peoplesoft. I also remember a few other programs refusing to work correctly if I was remoted in, but worked fine with VNC. P.S. I use RealVNC but I have a lot of problems with resolution.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[ideatrack]

Would have agreed with you on this one, and on the server side, still do. However have found issues with connecting to machines through a firewall (on port 5900) when using the Windows client. No such problem using RealVNC. From looking at forums this seems a fairly common problem. I'm sure there's a workaround but, for ease, I'll just RealVNC.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the vncviewer's I've used in linux can't seem to be configured to lookup samba host information, that way I wouldn't need to know the IP (maybe it can, correct me if I'm wrong).

You can do this quite easily with the Winbind NSS module from Samba; just install it and add "wins" to the end of the "hosts" line in /etc/nsswitch.conf . Then any application that uses standard lookup functions like gethostbyname or similar will automatically use a WINS lookup if /etc/hosts and DNS don't provide an answer.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[ByteSlicer]

That is the RDP client application, not the server.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[hubertt]

What you point to is the remote desktop client.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[akadruid]

I find that TightVNC will not read anything that is in the clipboard before it is started. Hence you may have to recopy after opening TightVNC.

Other than that, it works nicely.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[R.Caley]

Uhm, TightVNC supports it. Just cut, or paste at whichever end you need. Works fine for me.

It's always a bit hit and miss for me, I end up using F8 every time, because I can't predict what will happen otherwise.

And emacs is hopeless. Even using F8 I can hardly ever manage to make a local and VNCed emacs swap text with cut and paste, I end up pasting into an xterm and copying from there.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[FlopEJoe]

"TightVNC will not read anything that is in the clipboard before it is started"

FWIW, neither will RealVNC client ver 3.3.7. That always gets me but not that bad a hassle.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[eam]

It's also good for users who swear they're typing exactly what* you told them to type.

*for nearly all possible values of 'what': URL, username, command line, etc. Only exception I can think of is password, which you (hopefully) wouldn't be able to see.

It's also great for really freaking out an uninformed user!

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[KermodeBear]

I've only ever used TightVNC because, so far, it has done just about everything I need it to do; So, as far as comparisons go, my comment is pretty worthless. However, it is fairly quick, runs on multiple platforms, and has some nice features such as file transfers between machines in the newer versions. There is also a special Win32 display hook that helps the speed and quality dramatically. Every once in a while the screen gets garbled and the whole thing needs to be refreshed, but this is rare. I used it throughout college and I use it now at home; Great for fixing the parents' computers remotely.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[krygny]

The problem I've had (at least on Win2K):
NetMeeting's Remote Desktop Service does not restart automatically on reboot. It starts 'paused'. I tried running it at work and if there was a power transient, my PC rebooted to the signon screen but the service wouldn't start. I'd have to physically visit the PC and start the service manually. Not much good for remote access.

Now, I run Tight VNC and it works great.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[devilspgd]

You can download the client, but not the server component.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Cafemeister]

A problem I ran into using RD is that I was unable to redirect the connection to localhost for tunneling the connection through ssh. I read a registry hack that can be performed to allow RD to do it, but it looked like more trouble than it was worth. TightVNC never griped about connecting to localhost:port

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[jacobcaz]

• You can't do everything over Remote Desktop that you can with VNC. I've seen this first hand with the admin console for Peoplesoft.

Yep, that's what we use TightVNC for (PeopleSoft). You need console access and as far as I know only VNC and PCAnywhere will give that to you. It beats the heck out of walking to the server room everytime I need to bounce a process scheduler!

I wish terminal services did have a console option because VNC is a little pokey even over 100Mb/s compared to the RDP.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Doctor Faustus]

I usually use VNC to check on whatever process I have running, and Remote Desktop will give me nice, fast, good-looking access to the wrong login. Usually, I want to see what's actually on the screen.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[leonbrooks]

Have it listen on the LAN interface instead of loopback, and aim the client at that.

You used to be able to have it listen on 127.0.0.2 and because of a bug in Win2k/XP's networking it would work. WIth XP SP2 and I think the latest Win2k SP, they fixed that bug.

Why they fixed it, I do not know. Too useful, I guess. Perhaps you can set up a pseudo interface (a la lo:0 on Linux) and use that? I don't know enough MS-DOS^WWindows voodoo to say.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[allan_q]

I wish terminal services did have a console option because VNC is a little pokey even over 100Mb/s compared to the RDP.

If you're running Win2k3 Server, have you tried to use the console switch on the client?

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[moonbender]

You can't do everything over Remote Desktop that you can with VNC.

And the other way round. Remote Desktop apparently also transmits audio from the program, which VNC doesn't do. I haven't tried it with RD so I don't know how well it works, but I've unsuccessfully tried to come up with a similar solution using different possible OS software.
I'm trying to redirect the audio from laptop applications to the desktop's sound system. I guess on *nix the various sound server tools the desktop managers supply (ie ESD and such) could do the job and, along with X or VNC, have a similar feature set as RD in that regard.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[SCHecklerX]

Also, there are some windoze apps that insist on having console, so rdesktop is not an option.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[Insightfill]

Instructions on turning on the Web-based RDC client: here

Also: a discussion on Techreport.com on how to change the RDC listening/sending port, and a bunch of other RDC related info/links: here

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[dublin]

The RFB protocol (which VNC uses) has specified ServerCutText and ClientCutText messages since protocol version 3.3... You just need to find server and client implementations that actually support it. :)

Several of them do - I've been using VNC for all kinds of things and across all kinds of platforms for many years - Until last year, I used Konstantin Kaplinsky's TightVNC, but it's gotten a bit dated and UltraVNC is more stable, plus the file transfer feature is very handy.

My current config is UltraVNC as the remote server and WinIIvnc on the viewer end - this produces a nearly perfect multiple computer/multiple screen envinronment, with a single shared keyboard, mouse, and copy/paste clipboard. (Although I used to use Linux and BSD on the desktop, I've moved back to an all-Windows desktop environment, so this is really the thing I care about most...)

This is the standard dekstop setup for me whenever I'm in my office - I use the laptop as a second screen, which is especially handy for keeping a documentation window (web, pdf, etc.) in view while working on the other screen, and having copy/paste between them is often quite handy, for fairly obvious reasons. Other than having two Start buttons and taskbars, it's just like having a nice multiple-screen computer...

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[dublin]

Sorry, that's Win2VNC, not winIIVNC: Here's the link:http://fredrik.hubbe.net/win2vnc.html

It really is one of the most useful pieces of software I use, and I'm *really* surprised it hasn't shown up in any other post in this entire discussion on VNC!

(Of course, there's X2VNC if the "master" desktop is X-based rather than Windows-based. Personally, I'm *way* too addicted to a few dozen critical apps that only exist in the Windows world.)

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[bhtooefr]

So try Ultra. It's got more features than Tight, and thanks to it's video hook driver, it's almost as fast as Remote Desktop Connection/Terminal Server.

Re:tightvnc vs. real vnc

[TheSpoom]

What, you think Microsoft would want to be compatible with Linux in any way, shape, or form? Their answer would be to tell you, "oh, just drop Linux and use our products exclusively."

Actually

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'd go for the first to support OS/2.

Re:Actually

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Beats me. Argue with the guy that posted the article... because it's asking for an opinion. I gave mine, you're too fucking lame to do that though, it would seem.

Re:Actually

[secretsquirel]

"for personal reasons. I have a habit of bitching about crackmoderation"

I hate moderating my crack too, there's nothing worse than having to wait 20 minutes for my next hit so I don't end up smoking it all before I can get more. Every once in a while I just get like an oz. of it and smoke all I want for like almost a day, those days are freaking sweet!

Re:Actually

[picket4all]

A VNC viewer for 32-bit OS/2 PM has been available since yr 2000:

http://www.sra.co.jp/people/akira/os2/vnc-pm/

A native 32-bit OS/2 PM version of a VNC server has been coded by russian programmers this year (2004).

It's here:
http://eros2.by.ru/pmvnc_en.shtml So there :-P And yes, some of us still run 32-bit OS/2 with SMP, JFS, Mozilla 1.7, OpenOffice, gcc, wget, you name it. Why go multi-user if there's only one person sitting in front of each PC at a time? :P

Re:Actually

[Martin Maciaszek]

I'd go with the first to support NeXTSTEP. :)

(Hey VNC-Programmers, how's that for a challenge?)

Re:Actually

[XMyth]

Maybe you should talk to this guy.

Re:Actually

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I was serious. This is now my favorite VNC. And don't preach to me, I have an OS/2 machine myself, several actually.

Re:Actually

[Martin Maciaszek]

This guy is just talking about the client. I've seen them on Peak and Peanuts. Unfortunately there is no VNC server. So I can get my X or Windows desktop over to my trusty NeXT cube but not the other way around :(

UltraVNC

[AKAImBatman]

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?

Re:UltraVNC

[jtriska]

And its FAST.

Plus, its still backwards compatible with the standard/original vnc, so you can connnect to it even without the optimized windows UltraVNC client.

Re:UltraVNC

[drulez]

actually ... tightvnc 1.3.x supports a video driver.

additionally, enhancements have been made to
the polling algorithm which have greatly improved
performance and cpu usage.

1.3.x is labelled a development version,
but it's very stable. check it out.

Re:UltraVNC

[Com2Irq5]

UltraVNC crashes on Windows machine with an ATI All-In-Wonder Video Card. It also has problems on machines with multiple monitors.

Re:UltraVNC

[magefile]

THus it's the only one that doesn't need to poll the hell out of your computer ... Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Narf, I think so Brain, but where are we going to get enough punchcard ballot machines for all the voters in Florida by midnight November 1st?

Re:UltraVNC

[Ark42]

I have to agree with TightVNC - the video driver addon for 1.3 is very good and TightVNC is by far the fastest VNC I've used.

Re:UltraVNC

[dtfinch]

One word: outsourcing

Re:UltraVNC

[fallenangel99]

I agreee. I've used UltraVNC with no problems. You can access your computer through a webpage (the best part of UltraVNC really), provided you have a dynamic dns updater (like no-ip.org). Its really hassle free. All you have to do is forward ports 5900, and you should be set.

If you are behind a college network and want to access someone's computer in there (friend, gf,etc) you can have that person run UltraVNC viewer and "invite" you.

Re:UltraVNC

[supz]

I second that, though at the moment I have to run UltraVNC on my Windows machine, since TightVNC seems to crash every time I connect...

Still haven't had the time to figure out why.

Regardless, TightVNC is definitely my favorite VNC. It's small, efficient, clean and the new video hook driver is amazing -- it rivals Windows XP remote desktop.

Re:UltraVNC

[shawn(at)fsu]

I agree TightVNC is what I'm using to pwn your box right now and the video looks fine.

All joking aside tightVNC is a great app thats what I used in college and I was happy to find thats what my job uses.

Re:UltraVNC

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that UltraVNC builds on tightvnc in some ways...for one, it supports "tight" compression which is the compression scheme that makes tightVNC better on slow connections than regular VNC. Also, UltraVNC seems to have had all the features, like file transfer and video driver, long before tightvnc did. I actually just started using UltraVNC 2 months ago instead of tightvnc for these reasons.

Also, on Windows, the UltraVNC server has the option of using the windows usernames and passwords (the same ones you would use to log onto your computer from the welcome screen) for authentication instead of only a password.

Re:UltraVNC

[ischorr]

It's not fast if you're planning on trying to connect to anything that's not Windows... Like I suspect a huge number of us are.

They need to build drivers for other OSes...

Re:UltraVNC

[mlk]

Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Yes, but you wear the socks this time.

Re:UltraVNC

[AKAImBatman]

It's not fast if you're planning on trying to connect to anything that's not Windows... Like I suspect a huge number of us are.

Eh? UltraVNC is a fork of TightVNC, so it supports the "tight" protocols just fine. As long as your Unix box is using X-Windows -> VNC translation, the performance should be just as good as UltraVNC on Windows. Before UltraVNC came along, Unix was the best place to use VNC, because the X protocol could be directly interpreted without the need for a special video driver.

Re:UltraVNC

[Cylix]

Don't forget netbios look ups in the 1.3.

Its very handy thing to have.

I no longer have to ping netbios names on the dhcp network to get their ip.

Re:UltraVNC

[Awptimus Prime]

You should try the Microsoft VNC client if you are running Windows. It works well enough to view or listen to audio and video with little loss with the firewire bridge between my two Windows boxes.

I also have a dual monitor configuration and it tends to like running maximized on the second screen by default.

There really isn't anything I don't like about it, since it works so well, except the fact it is a Microsoft product. But hey, it's free!

Re:UltraVNC

[magefile]

It was original, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me I independently recreated an actual episode. They came up with everything!

Re:UltraVNC

[AKAImBatman]

Microsoft. Has a VNC client. That's news to me!

Are you referring to Microsoft's RDP Client by any chance?

Re:UltraVNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they call it the RDC Client to be honest. Remote Desktop Connection.

Depending on what version of the underlying technology you use, it's been called RDP as well as other things. I forget what Citrix called it, since it's technically a Citrix product (like every decent MS "product" RDC was written by someone else)...

Still, the original poster was clearly mistaken. VNC = cross platform. RDC = proprietary. The only official RDC component available on a non-Windows-on-x86 is an RDC Client for OS X.

I can literally go from any VNC client to any VNC server, irregardless of underlying hardware, OS, any combination thereof. VNC is great.

Re:UltraVNC

[caseih]

Are there any hacks out there that would grab just one application's window? I would love that functionality. That would make vnc almost a citrix server, except that it could only handle one user at a time.

Re:UltraVNC

[Awptimus Prime]

I mixed up Terminal Services with VNC. I've never heard it refered to as RDC, though.

Re:UltraVNC

[AKAImBatman]

Oh for crying out loud.

RDP = Remote Desktop Protocl
ICA = Independent Computing Architecture
VNC = Virtual Network Computing

Microsoft's RDP client is called Remote Desktop Client, and has nothing to do with Citrix's protocol or products. Microsoft shafted Citrix with their cheap knock-off that doesn't work 1/10 as well as Citrix's ICA protocol.

Re:UltraVNC

[RA-Zero]

UltraVNC has been able to do this for quite a while.

Re:UltraVNC

[B747SP]

Shit happens... unfortunately I'm the one who has to clean it up. (proverbially)

Metaphorically, actually.

Re:UltraVNC

[arodland]

I think that TightVNC has the most active development among projects with a truly free mentality. It's also got history, great platform support, and, of course, the "tight" encoding. :)

Re:UltraVNC

[luferbu]

TightVNC also does it.

Re:UltraVNC

[JamesTRexx]

I just checked it out and installed it on my media server (W2K Pro, only because my Terratec isn't supported and that's my main priority).
With the right settings I was able to connect to it with TightVNC 1.2.9 and play a movie fullscreen on tv without it getting shaky.
Using the dfmirage driver though slows down and prevents Classic Media Player going fullscreen while I'm connected.
It does work very fast for regular use though, but for my purpose the original way works best.

Re:UltraVNC

[BiggyP]

TightVNC is certainly the option i'd choose, i've heard from some users that UltraVNC is an impressive system but i've heard an awful lot of complaints about it too, with steady and well tested improvements, such as the driver hook, working their way into TVNC, UVNC's losing any advantage it may have once had.

Re:UltraVNC

[XMyth]

maybe he meant it satrically?

Re:UltraVNC

[JLavezzo]

> Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Yeah, Brain. But once after the wedding how will we get all those little penguins' tuxedos back to the rental shop? And anyway, Bill Gates is already married! Zarg!

Re:UltraVNC

[gfxguy]

Of course that sounds like every other VNC server I've tried...

Re:UltraVNC

[chthonicdaemon]

But, Brain, where would we get a beowulf cluster of windows VNC boxes?

Re:UltraVNC

[AbbyNormal]

Does it work on Win2k3? The mirage driver did not work for me on a Win2k3 server. We have mostly win machines that were running VNC, but we have since switched to RemoteDesktop. From an office environment, perspective, (not XP Home), you cannot go wrong with Remote Desktop.

Re:UltraVNC

[rweller]

I got no problems here, are you using the video hook driver? (i'm not)

Re:UltraVNC

[jnik]

Others have mentioned tightvnc (which requires you to run a separate server if under X) or ultravnc (which is windows only and has a closed-source component). If you want to grab a window from an existing X server, use x11vnc. Between the three your bases should be covered.

Re:UltraVNC

[Llama_STi]

I also use UltraVNC and have multiple monitors. Funnily enough, I never have had issues to do with the monitors. My only issue with UltraVNC is if you start a session, then cancel it, it seems like you have to kill the client manually. This is going over windows-to-windows connection. Sometimes the server would also hang. A favourite bug of mine is when you connect and the client says everything's fine and dandy but no display ever pops up on the client's machine?? Crazy - but that happens only once in awhile and damn, it's fast! :D

Re:UltraVNC

[Yggdrasil42]

I originally used RealVNC, until I found the file transfer support in UltraVNC, a feature that MS has had for a while and is very useful to me. Finally a VNC version that had this too.

The performance was good as well, but as with all other VNC versions I've used, the stability wasn't good. I often get disconnects in RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc. while working on a Win98 PC from my WinXP PC.

I hope the recent TightVNC has also improved stability, because that's the thing I've been missing most.

Re:UltraVNC

[drinkypoo]

RDC is what TS is known as on XP. FYI, XP Home doesn't provide RDC service (unless, maybe, you're allowed to do it brokered through MSNM) but XP Pro does.

VNC on Mac OS X

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[erik umenhofer]

there's still a bug in b2 that causes issues with interacting with tighvnc server. should be fixed in the next release though!

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Tibor the Hun]

yes, i like OSXvnc as well. i ssh into my box, start up the OSXvnc, and am good to go.
i do this because i don't like to have a server running all the time, and i haven't figured out how to start the apple remote desktop via ssh. (i haven't tried very hard since ssh+OSXvnc works so well for me...)

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Jeremy Erwin]

I use the following mechanism on my little network.

ssh carcosa.local -L 5901:127.0.0.1:5900
jeremy@carcosa.local's password:
Carcosa:~ jeremy$ /Applications/OSXvnc.app/OSXvnc-server -localhost

which allows me to connect my vnc client to localhost, display 1. Seems a bit more secure.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[bay43270]

Does Chicken of the VNC support full screen? I currently use VNCViewer on my mac. I use RealVNC on my PCs. Since one of my PCs has two monitors (supported nicely in RealVNC), I like being able to run the client full screen and allow it to scroll. VNCViewer on the mac doesn't support this.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[TinoMNYY24]

Personally, I use VNCThing. I found Chicken of the VNC, and it crapped out on me so many times that I got rid of it. Link to VNCThing

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[mpost4]

Question what about one for speed, I am using x2vnc from my linux box, I have to the left the windows box and the the right the OSX box. When I go to the windows box it works just as fast as if I was using the mouns on the windows box, but when I go to the mac box it goes very slowly. How can I speed up vnc on OS X?

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Domini]

I tried VNCThing and VNCViewer as well, but CotVNC is still the most stable and fastest.

(Last time I did the test... could have changed?)

But to be honest VNC is a bit lagging behind on OS X...

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Domini]

If it's a little network, why not create public and private keys to avoid passwords?

Believe me, it's heaven compared to passwords!

And then also shorten that to:

ssh carcosa.local -L 5901:127.0.0.1:5900 "/Applications/OSXvnc.app/OSXvnc-server -localhost"

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Domini]

I don't have my Mac to test this, but would

open -a OSXvnd -localhost

not be a "better" way to start it from the command line than:

/Applications/OSXvnc.app/OSXvnc-server -localhost

I'm not too sure if the one only starts a non-gui service or not... but it surely is more portable.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[JimRay]

How to enable the Apple Remote Desktop client as a VNC server

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041 013050458686&query=vnc

Really nice, use it all the time

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[SlamMan]

Gotta love the dual screen support.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[bay43270]

I downloaded it and tried it out. To answer my own question - yes CotVNC does support full screen.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[liquidsin]

Up until yesterday, I was using VNCThing on Panther to handle a couple RIPs here (Win2k and Win98, with RealVNC server) but ever since I upgraded from Jaguar to Panther I kept getting weird errors in VNCThing. Nothing major, but whenever I docked it and tried to go back it gave me some strange, cryptic error message. When I clicked ok it went away and worked as normal, but it's seemed a little sluggish on 10.3. When I tried to upgrade I discovered that Puple Shark Software's website (www.webthing.net) is now for sale. So I downloaded Chicken of the VNC. So far, so good.

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[Jeremy Erwin]

Nope. Doesn't work.

2004-10-20 11:31:26.198 open[9548] No such file: /Users/jeremy/-localhost

Besides, it's not too difficult to enclose the whole messy command line as a bash script.

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/OSXvnc.app/OSXvnc-serve r -localhost

You can also configure OSXvnc to run as a startup service. It's probably less hassle, but...

Re:VNC on Mac OS X

[davvr6]

Isn't KDX client-server a viable option. http://www.haxial.com/products/kdx/index2.html Process Monitor -- The "Process Monitor" window shows you a list of the processes (running programs) which are running on the server computer. You can also remotely exit/terminate/restart processes. Launch Programs -- You can remotely launch programs or scripts on the server computer. View/Control Display -- You can remotely view the display/screen/monitor of the server computer, and you can also control it with the keyboard and mouse. This even works between different operating systems, for example a Mac can view the screen of a Windows computer, or vice-versa. [Screenshot] Remote File Management -- Folders can be created on the server. Alias/shortcuts can also be created. Multiple files on the server can be moved from one location to another in the one action. Multiple files can be deleted in one action. Files can be renamed. You can get information about particular files. All of this is done remotely using KDX Client. Remote Trash Emptying -- You can remotely instruct the server computer to empty its Trash / Recycle Bin. This is very useful to free up space. Remote Shutdown -- Remotely shutdown the server, and optionally restart or shutdown the whole computer. You can also optionally include a message to be sent to everyone before the server is shutdown. General Info -- See the operating system and version of the remote computer, when the server was started, its "uptime", and its clock.

VNC??

[Mori Chu]

I wouldn't use any of em; can't trust the VNC. Lousy Vemocrats!!!

Re:VNC??

[T-Ranger]

Hmm. ?NC:

• DNC: not great, but better then the alternative
• VNC: good
• BNC: bad, but better then F

I guess 1 and two halves out of 3 isnt bad.

I have no point

Re:VNC??

[DarkSkiesAhead]

Ah, another misguided Vepublican. When will you learn that the VOP is only helping out big business?

Re:VNC??

[FooAtWFU]

Ah, another misguided Vepublican. When will you learn that the VOP is only helping out big business?

Don't you mean the VOIP?

Re:VNC??

[Syberghost]

That's the problem with the internet; all the damn Vibertarians and Vocialists fighting.

Re:VNC??

[srealm]

Ve are ze Vepublicans, ve hef veys of meking you vote!

Re:VNC??

[Arctic Fox]

*shaking head* A misguided Vemocrat. VNC is to Vemocrat (not AS) VOP is to Vepublican. ahh, nevermind....

Re:VNC??

[suwain_2]

So is this vhy the FCC wants to regulate the VOiP so much?

Vow! I alvays thought it was vonservatives, not vemocrats, that were behind it.

Re:VNC??

[atrader42]

Ah, another misguided Vepublican. When will you learn that the VOP is only helping out big business?
Don't you mean the VOIP?

Google, is that you?

Avoid radmin

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Avoid radmin

[nelsonha]

I use Radmin heavily at work and it does support 128-bit encryption. However, I don't like it because to get a decent screen refresh, I have to set polling at 100 times a second which causes baseline CPU usage at about 12-15%. When looking at a production server this is severely performance draining. I have to set the polling to be at 5/second to get decent CPU performance, but even typing is horrible at this rate. Also it doesn't detect the state of the CAPS LOCK key, so when logging in with passwords of mixed cased, it is impossible to determine if caps lock is on from the dialog box. Once into Windows you can use the on screen keyboard, but that doesn't help when logging in. Overall while I like the security of Radmin. You can use NT permissions for logins instead of creating new logins just for this. It overall saps my productivity by being slow or only being fast at the expense of my production servers.

Re:Avoid radmin

[scdeimos]

Caps Lock isn't an issue at the logon prompt. Because you're security conscious and have disabled "remember last username" across your network, you have to type your username in anyways and would notice something like that, right?

Re:Avoid radmin

[Nogami_Saeko]

The biggest problem (imho) with Radmin is that they havn't update it in about 3 years. While it is fairly good at what it does, the video hook driver (responsible for the speed under previous Windows OSs), doesn't work under XP (and I think the last few service packs for 2K).

There are also issues with dual-monitor displays (ie: they don't work).

Despite that, I find it very useful for my purposes. I'd use VNC, but I like the encrypted connection with Radmin and I don't want to fool with encryption libraries for VNC. If VNC could enable encryption as well as file transfers over their java client, I'd drop Radmin in a second.

N.

Re:Avoid radmin

[lokee]

I tunnel RAdmin over ssh to access my Win2K Server at home from work. Couldn't be happier with the performance. I set screen updates to 20 to minimize cpu load, and see no problems with response time over dsl even with fairly high latency. My experience (admittedly 2 yrs ago) with TightVNC was not nearly so enjoyable.

Re:Avoid radmin

[Nogami_Saeko]

Well, I was referring to the fact that 2.x do not support multi-monitor environments, and that the video hook driver which gives a tremendous speed advantage under older windows operating systems doesn't work now.

3.0 server has been promised for 2 years now with no apparent movement from Famatech. Now they are deleting/locking threads on their discussion forum from unhappy customers. These are warning signs in my book...

N.

Re:Avoid radmin

[Nogami_Saeko]

That's only the viewer program, not the server.

If you look closer at that page, you'll see that the new video hook driver is part of the 3.0 server which is what us registered owners have been clamoring for, not the viewer.

N.

cast another vote for tightVNC

[netnerd.caffinated]

as a user of the original REAL VNC, i went to tight case it performed much better over dialup

Re:cast another vote for tightVNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Tight is good, but UltraVNC has tight built in. Tight compression is just PNG compression for high contrast areas, and JPEG compression for lower contrast areas. UltraVNC combines the best features of all the other VNC into one. Ultra also includes a file transfer utility, and a plugin to authenticate against a Windows Domain. Not to mention they have a plugin architecture that allows encryption.

Wow..!

[ID000001]

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!

Re:Wow..!

[AKAImBatman]

I realize the best and most speedy one out of them all are actually Remote desktop that came with WindowsXP Pro and such..

You haven't tried Citrix. :-D

Re:Wow..!

[artemis67]

I thought Remote Desktop was based on Citrix?

Anyway, I have to agree with the original post... I use both VNC and Remote Desktop, and Remote Desktop is better by far. It's nice that I can use the Mac client to manage my various Windows servers, and it's also nice that the program shares the Clipboard between the desktops. The one thing I would like to see them add is the ability to drag-and-drop files between desktops.

Re:Wow..!

[AKAImBatman]

I thought Remote Desktop was based on Citrix?

No, not quite. Citrix originally licensed NT 3.51 and changed the windows code in order to retrofit true-multiuser capabilities and their super-thin, super-fast ICA protocol. When Microsoft noticed that the idea worked, they refused to license NT 4.0, and created their RDP protocol in a hurry. As a result, the RDP protocol was similar, but much heavier than ICA.

I remember some of our users running Citrix over dial-up. It was difficult to tell they weren't at their terminals. :-)

Re:Wow..!

[nFriedly]

the remote desktop in windows is all i have ever used. it was already there, and it works. im always on a broadband connection, so the lag isnt too bad. dont think iv ever had it crash on me.

Re:Wow..!

[archen]

I'll second that. I started installing VNC for cheap remote assistance across the company network. It works okay but it certainly drags. Then I tried using Citrix using GotoMypc - man that totally spanks every other remote gui I've seen. It's also just as flexible as VNC since you can use it on Mac OSX, PC, and Unix.

I always thought Citrix cost an arm and a leg, but gotomypc is about $14 a month. Which is less than a phone line / modem / pcanywhere thing we used to use for remote support. VNC is nice way to connect while saving money, but if I needed to get serious work done on a regular basis, I think that an extra $20 a month is worth the cost.

Re:Wow..!

[supz]

Agreed. Windows XP Remote Desktop is definitely the best.

I usually use that, however one problem is that the remote desktop client doesn't let you connect to localhost, on an XP machine. I SSH into home, via PuTTY and setup a tunnel for port 3389, but can't use it for this reason. If you want to administer a remote machine, via an SSH tunnel, you have no choice but to use VNC (or setup some port forwarding, for a specific ip block, as I do for work)

Re:Wow..!

[xbmodder]

the reason RDP is so fast is cuz it uses calls instead of sys grab!

Re:Wow..!

[jack_csk]

Really? I've seen Citrix running Windows NT 4.0, how could it happen when Microsoft refused to license NT4.0?

Re:Wow..!

[squeegee_boy]

Sure it does. I use localhost:5000, with that notation. I'm doing it right now. Works great for connecting to WTS & RD.

The rest of my configuration is pretty much identical to yours.

Re:Wow..!

[AKAImBatman]

Citrix currently runs on top of Microsoft's RDP functionality. That's why you need Terminal Server, Terminal Server Client Licenses, AND Citrix licenses. You used to be able to get it all from Citrix. (At a much lower cost I might add.)

Microsoft pretty much pushed Citrix out of the market and did their best to relegate Remote Desktop Networking to "Admin" functionality. Assholes.

Re:Wow..!

[Myen]

You mean 98/ME. (No, 2k doesn't work - tried it before. Which sucks, because it means it will never capture keys like alt+tab)

Re:Wow..!

[Bellesarius]

Wrong!! Citrix Metaframe does not run on RDP. Citrix still uses their superfast and lean ICA protocol. Here's the real scoop (BTW, I was a WinFrame 2.0 beta tester)

Once there was OS/2... a company named citrix came along an created a multi-user version with a remote protocol much faster and leaner than X... and it was good... ran great over 9600 baud modems.

Then Windows came out and destroyed OS/2. Citrix licensed the entire Windows 3.51 code base and overhauled the kernel with new multi-user windows feature, thereafter called multi-win. They mated multi-win to their ICA protocol for presentation. You purchased "Winframe" from them, it was their build and you had to get service packs etc.. from them.. but it was rock solid, super fast and worked. You paid for the server, then a per concurrent user license fee. So you only paid for the max number of concurrent users.

Then the thin-client rage hit, spurred largely by the success of Citrix. Citrix had secured the source code to Windows NT 4.0, ported multiwin and their ICA hooks to it, christened it Winframe 2.0 and had it ready to go when Microsoft pulled the plug. Microsoft made a big splash with their "Hydra" project that they were going to come out with their own citrix killer. In reality it was a small team of program managers gathering requirements. the whole thing was created to steal multi-win and ICA before the thin-client rage destroyed them(as was the thinking back then)

So the 8,000 lb gorilla at the last moment, Citrix 2.0 was DONE for months, refused to agree to the licensing terms for NT4.0 effectively derailing Citrix. Citrix was smart though.. they didn't blink, instead they went into overdrive negotiation mode and eventually hammered out an agreement where they licensed multi-win to Microsoft for a small amount of cash, kept ICA to themselves and got Microsoft to sign a 3 year no compete for non-windows platforms. The multiwin technology was then baked into Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server (and if you actually have a copy around and view the details on the core kernel DLLs, they still say citrix BTW) and they took their netmeeting protocol h.323 and created RDP. RDP clients were only available for windows as per the citrix agreement. Citrix then built Metaframe as an add-on to the multi-win kernel extensions and brought their superior management tools and protocols to the platform.

The killer is that microsoft then demanded a per seat license of NT 4.0 Professional for each user, whether they were running Citrix or not. In the end, anyone deploying thin-clients uses Citrix so Microsoft succeeded in essentially foisting a huge tax on the thin-client market thwarting any inroads in might have had as a major desktop replacement. You have to buy Windows, pay Citrix, pay for seats (or TCALS, slightly less expensive per seats licenses if you arent running XP now) and ICA licenses which are still connection based. This relegated Citrix to a very important, but niche player which made them happy, and protected Microsoft's desktop monopoly.

Citrix has gone on to extend their technology with clustering and other very powerful tools, including securing the protocol very nicely. RDP has been better optimized and runs fairly well, although ICA still runs circles around it. Microsoft then added a remote admin mode to W2k, XP and W2k3 using the now venerable multi-win extensions that are now part of the core kernel code.

And now, as Paul Harvey says, you know the rest of the story.

Re:Wow..!

[jsebrech]

That is actually the best-case scenario with regards to cooperating with microsoft. If you could conceivably be any threat to MS at any point in the future, they WILL immobilize your business, by trying to buy you out, relegating you to a niche, or destroying you entirely.

Re:Wow..!

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, thank you for the recap.

Wrong!! Citrix Metaframe does not run on RDP. Citrix still uses their superfast and lean ICA protocol.

I didn't say it doesn't. My point was that ICA plugs into Microsoft's RDP server. Thus you have to license Terminal Server, Terminal Server Licenses, and Citrix Licenses. But ICA still kicks serious ass. :-)

Re:Wow..!

[madman101]

Just before IBM pulled the plug on OS/2, I saw a demo of their thin client for OS/2. Ran unbelievably well on old junk machines. They were running 10 386 PC's off a single Pentium server. Unfortunately, it only ran Win 3.1 apps so it was already obsolete.

Re:Wow..!

[jafac]

Great post.

The Citrix "saga" is one of the great untold stories of the otherwise well-known Microsoft quest for dominance.

At the time, I worked for a company whose product was just plain not at all stable on Citrix, so I became intimately familliar with Citrix back in the mid 1990's. Ironically, I'm working for a different company, and I'm supporting/developing a product for Citrix today. It's really an awesome platform, if it weren't for the onerous licensing model foisted on us by Microsoft.

I use

[mattboston]

UltraVNC, it's works great.

Real VNC

[jlefeld]

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.

Re:Real VNC

[Stonent1]

All VNCs support that. Nice to access your desktop from any computer with Java. (Adminning Windows servers from Solaris or Mac OS9)

Fastest

[Cthefuture]

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.

Re:Fastest

[jag164]

Your mileage may vary.... I find that VNC beats the living heck out of X11 sessions (at least the various windows X servers). Plus the whole shaky/burping LAN makes VNC such a nicer alternative in the MS-to-Unix world. Unix-to-unix I typically only use X over ssh for quick and dirty activiys, not heavy multi terminal coding sessions.

Re:Fastest

[BRTB]

Okay... but can you open up several apps, close the session / lose your connection and then reconnect, having your apps still running in place? This is a must-have in my situation, for adminning several evil Java server-apps that insist on only running when they have an X window open.

On Windows I just use RDP/terminal services... for X I'm kinda locked into VNC, be it via the module or the VNC X server, depending on whether the server has a video device. VNC, even over somewhat fast Internet links (partial DS3 server end, 3mbit cable client, 50ms or less ping between) feels a lot more lagged than the RDP link.

Re:Fastest

[Covener]

I'll agree with some of the other followups.

VNC buys you the convenience of detaching from it, and is just plain snappier for many apps. I'll quite often "buffer" a few apps in a VNC session for just those reasons.

Re:Fastest

[batkiwi]

That really depends on what your goal is. Since you can't move X-sessions around (eg I can't start an app remotely on my desktop, then "move" its display to another desktop, or freeze it "Screen" style), I prefer the following setup on my debian boxes:

-NO "real" X11 server installed
-vnc4server installed, started up as a replacement for my X server
-vncfb running locally for when I'm "at" the computer
-real vnc from my windows box to take control

If you just want to go in and check something out that requires a WM, X11 is great, or if you want to do it just for one "session" it's great, but to leave anything running X11 just doesn't cut it.

For example, on my home filesharing box I leave azareus and a jabber client running, so I can vnc in to check my messages and check how downloads are going. Can't do that with JUST X.

Re:Fastest

[harikiri]

Something interesting I read about when I was looking for alternatives to X (even on local lan it can perform poorly). These figures are in comparison to Nomachine's NX technology:

The basic stuff is opensource. And the numbers I heard about this are pretty nice:

• 9600 Baud GSM modem link over vanilla X: Mozilla-1.6 needs 4000 roundtrips and takes 5 minutes.
• 9600 Baud GSM modem link over NX: Mozilla-1.6 needs a dozen roundtrips and takes 20 seconds.
• KDE-3.2 desktop startup over vanilla X: transfers 4.8 MByte of data.
• KDE-3.2 desktop startup over NX: transfers 35 kByte of data.

This was cut and pasted from an email I sent to workmates a while back when I heard about NX initially. These days I prefer to use RealVNC (until I get around to buying a copy of NX) to connect to my XFCE session at home from the office.

Even on what you consider a fast connection (local ethernet) I prefer VNC over X11.

Re:Fastest

[pHDNgell]

This is a must-have in my situation, for adminning several evil Java server-apps that insist on only running when they have an X window open.

Are you sure about that? Why do your server apps need a window? Do you have to actually start the thing graphically, or does it just want a window after it's started. In the latter case, there's java.awt.headless or at the least xvfb.

Re:Fastest

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I've never had any VNC program crash Windows as in the OS. Ever. Sometimes the VNC window stops or goes away when the connection is broken. I've primarily used RealVNC though. BTW, VNC, at least RealVNC limits itself to 20Mbps. I think this is so it doesn't hog network resources.

Doesn't Terminal Services cost money? Does one use X to remotely administer Macs, or is there still a Mac-specific alternative like there was with the older MacOSs?

Re:Fastest

[Nailer]

NX (www.nomachine.com) provides X compression that's competitive with Metaframe (ie, better than everything else).

Re:Fastest

[costa9]

If you don't plan to move your window between different machines, there is another solution at a lower layer: e.g. transport layer of the network stack. Find an appropriate network mobility solution, then you are all set. For example, I use DHARMA (http://dharma.cis.upenn.edu/). I ssh into a box, use X11 forwarding to start an X application on my laptop at home, then I suspend my laptop, bring it to my office, resume the laptop, and after the laptop is reconnected, all my X11 applications are still alive. This is especially convenient when a server doesn't have VNC installed and you are not the root, or you have a very crappy wireless condition, coming up and down all the time.

Re:Fastest

[BRTB]

Yeah, they need a window, running on either Linux or Windows (it's Java, it runs on both, but crashes more on Windows... something having to do with the TCP stack, haven't bothered to track it down). It actually starts from a cmd.exe+batch file or Xterm+shellscript, but brings up this big old-style Java GUI console. Close the window, no more page serving. We have no source, this is all very-expensive proprietary junk. Right now I'm using RealVNC with the vnc.so module on the main servers or the Xvnc virtual-framebuffer server on the headless boxes. We *are* having a problem with Xvnc closing itself out for no apparent reason, i was going to go investigate tying vnc.so into Xvfb next.

Just looking for a better/faster way, is all...

Re:Fastest

[myowntrueself]

Thats because the persistency of vnc type systems makes them percieved as being 'better' by most users because probably most of the time your network connection is not reliable enough (not just in terms of up/down-ness but in terms of changes in transfer rate and latency as the other traffic changes) for raw X to work *as*its*intended* (its a network transparent windowing system).

As new network technologies are introduced, 'X as it was intended' might become more practical, but the persistent nature of VNC-type systems makes them much more attractive for many other reasons than network bandwidth.

It can be like a 'virtual laptop' where you can hook into a custom desktop from some remote location, and sort of 'virtually close it down' (which works a lot better than 'suspend' on any real laptop!) and 'virtually carry it around'.

Re:Fastest

[Zardus]

A debian-centered site about this NX server can be found here. Its pretty easy to set this up (except for the lack of docs), so there's no exuse for not trying.

Re:Fastest

[beevan_jedi]

Tarantella's been around for years doing remote/ low bandwith X11 and is worth checking out too.

Re:Fastest

[TheTomcat]

working link to XCB

S

Re:Fastest

[drinkypoo]

Terminal services is provided with 2k server, 2003 server, and XP pro; it is otherwise unavailable. It costs no money on top of anything else. Administering macs remotely with X won't work, because mac programs talk to Quartz, not X. Unless, of course, they're X programs, but X11 is not a required part of MacOSX.

Re:Fastest

[Filmwatcher888]

Let's not forget that Tarantella was once part of SCO. They sold it off, and now lost a good source of non-UNIX monies.

Re:Fastest

[beevan_jedi]

Actually, Tarantella is the old Santa Cruz Operation. The Unix business was dying, so they sold it off to Caldera (who subsequently renamed themselves as The SCO Group). None of the old SCO execs are still around at Tarantella though.

For Windows platforms...

[chrispyman]

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.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[sndtech]

Terminal Services is great if you just want to log into a computer, but if you want to interact with another user or your own session already in progress( say you leave your comp running in your dorm or wherever and you need to just change something on your current screen) a VNC program will work much better( I use RealVNC works great no crashes yet, love the java viewer). Terminal services will cause you to be logged in twice on the same machine, causes all sort of strangeness.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[metallicagoaltender]

If the host machine is Windows XP, yes it locks out local users and anyone else trying to connect via RDP.

On Win2K Server (and 2K3 I'd assume as well, but can't verify as I don't use it), you can have a local session running and an RDP session running at the same time without any real performance loss or problems.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[JonGretar]

When I worked on a rather large IT company in the old days[a year ago] with a lot of clients I found that Radmin was the best choice. The speed and refresh rate of it is great. Much more than in any standard VNC programs I have tried. Plus the option of using a radmin computer as a gateway to another radmin computer is great when trying to help cusomers over a vast WAN. Plus it has shell and file transfer possibilities. And I found it useful for checking how my EVE Online pilot was doing from work.

Only problems is that is is Windows Only.

For adminin linux or unix computers I just use SSH and an X tunnel. Heck. I even ran Maya between continents using that method. Both systems running Irix.

To admin the Windows servers at work I use a combination of an SSH tunnel and RDP.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[IggyBung]

I had been using TightVNC to connect to my Windows work computer from my Windows home computer for quite a while (through a VPN) an it worked great. It was (reasonably) fast and was good enough for reading mail or a document. I only had the occational crash.

However, when I tried to connect back to my home computer from work (again over the VPN), all I got was a black screen. After a quick search on the net, I discovered that TightVNC (and all other flavours *VNC flavours), DON'T support Windows XP "fast user switching", which I use extensively at home to keep the kids out of my stuff.

The problem is, if a user is logged on locally, and that person is not the first person to have logged on (session 0), *VNC can't grab control of the desktop...hence, the black screen. It does work if the person logged in IS session 0, or if no one has yet logged into the machine, but that's too limiting.

I've done a fair amount of research, and I can't figure out a way around it. Not with *VNC.

However, the version of Remote Desktop that comes as part of XP (pro only?) handles he situation much more gracefully. True, only one person can be "logged on" at a time, but it does allow you to take control of the desktop, and potentially even log someone off first to allow you to do it.

I'm NOT a big Windows fan, but for Windows XP to Windows XP connections, Remote Desktop seems to be the best option to me.

Ig.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[m_pll]

Terminal Services is great if you just want to log into a computer, but if you want to interact with another user or your own session already in progress [...] Terminal services will cause you to be logged in twice on the same machine, causes all sort of strangeness.

On W2K3 mstsc can connect to the console session (mstsc /console).

Re:For Windows platforms...

[blackburnrovers]

my understanding is that with service pack 2, remote desktop does not lock out the local user anymore. both can be online simultaneously. if you have windows 2000 server, you can install terminal services of course and have someone locally on the server and as many licensed clients "terminalled" in as you have choose to pay for.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Jenova]

Matter of interst:

My colleague showed me his Radmin server running on crossover wine on his Whitebox.

RAdmin works well if you get the Updates per second down from the default 100, otherwise the CPU takes a hit.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[afidel]

Well you can remote controll/shadow another RDP/ICA session if the user is on a terminal/Citrix server, in fact I do this on a weekly basis. For fat clients VNC is obviously the way to go since XP's Remote Desktop feature doesn't allow shared sessions unless you use the remote help ticket system. Another good system that all the big boys use is WebEX which runs some remote controll protocol from an ActiveX controll, great for helping people who don't have your remote controll software already installed.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[maggotbrain_777]

While this is true, there is also the issue of liscensing to contend with. Additionaly, I have found it quite easy/common to find myself disconnected from a Windows Remote desktop session, only to find that the session has only hung, and not terminated. On several occasions, this resulted in the maximum allowed remote users. Thus, I found myself unable to resume _any_ session via remote desktop. That is where RealVNC, or as a last resort , an ssh shell come to the rescue. From one of these, I can terminate the hung Windows Remote desktop session and resume my work on the remote Windows bos. That being said, for managing MS servers, I find the Remote Desktop Client to be only slightly preferrable to RealVNC. I still have some concerns in the back of my head in regards to the security issues of this, though.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[IggyBung]

Nope. All services are connected to Session 0 (from what I can figure).

It would seem to me that there must be some game you can play by impersonating the current users security token (services running as SYSTEM are allowed to do this). But I'll be dipped if I can figure out how.

Ig

Re:For Windows platforms...

[sndtech]

sorry my only experience with RDP/ terminal services has been with Win2K server and WinXP, using xp as clients and win2k server for termserv, for a retail sales application, where everyone is the same user on the win2k box. very bad things can happen when network connectivity dies between locations, when people get disconnected they can get back into other peoples sessions and often times it is one of the manager sessions that get take by normal employees. we have been working with the software company to work things out for a better solution.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[gad_zuki!]

TS is superior to all VNC products, period. No one can develop something like TS without full access to a lot of windows code. TS doesnt do bitmap screencaptures and compression, its sends the underlying drawing commands to the client.

That said, I dont use it. Im not going to run an MS service like that for security reasons. I dont like being logged on in a different session (I want to access the crap I left running from earlier). I dont trust their encryption. Their user limitation (only 2 at a time) is silly when VNC is free.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[intangible]

Radmin Viewer and Server runs perfect under vanilla wine too, been using it for a couple of years with no problem, ever. It is the most responsive remote desktop setup I've used outside of Citrix.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Myen]

Actually, on XP Pro at least, because of the 2 (or was it 1? Never tested...) user restriction, it seems to always resume the active session. As in, I log in, do stuff, and connect remotely - I get the same stuff back, it's not a new session. Go to a different machine and resume from there - it's still the same screen. (It just locks the local user out.) This was all using the same user account though.

Also, I'm not sure if VNC would be technically possible to allow more than one user (as in, account) to be logged in. VNC does have the advantage of being able to share the session though (without using RDP's remote assistance thing).

I wouldn't trust MS's security either - that's what cygwin + openssh is for ;)

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Harbinger_Of_Sorrow]

I am no expert on the matter, but I am wondering, is there a VNC variant that actually locks the user out, I don't like ppl looking at my screen when I am working remotely.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Tim C]

I dont like being logged on in a different session (I want to access the crap I left running from earlier).

That sounds like a misconfiguration - every time I've used it, I've reconnected to the existing session without any hassles (indeed, without having to do anything different - just connect and there it is).

I dont trust their encryption.

I don't distrust it, but I do tunnel all my (internet-transported) connections over ssh - in to work because I have to (no direct access), in to home because I'm paranoid.

Their user limitation (only 2 at a time) is silly when VNC is free.

2 user limitation? XP Pro has a one user at a time limitation, while the server versions I believe limit you to as many as you buy licences for; you may well get 2 as standard though. VNC, however, cannot be used by more than one user simultaneously. Sure, more than one can connect at once, but if two try to use it at the same time, they'll be fighting for input control. Besides which, I've used VNC, PCAnywhere (8.0, a long time ago) and rdesktop, and rdesktop beats them no contest. I regularly get absolutely horrible performance using VNC over a 100Mbps LAN, while rdesktop into the same LAN via an ADSL link is far superior.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Tim C]

my understanding is that with service pack 2, remote desktop does not lock out the local user anymore.

If you're talking about Windows XP Pro, then I'm afraid you're incorrect. I'm currently connected to my machine at work via rdesktop (working from home is so much nicer), and as an experiment, connected back to my home machine - *poof*, booted off as expected.

Still, it's fair enough, I think - this is a desktop OS, not a server one. Sure, Linux gives you the capability for free, but that's their choice.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[Tim C]

Terminal services will cause you to be logged in twice on the same machine, causes all sort of strangeness.

I regularly (= every day, almost) reconnect to existing sessions on XP Pro boxes via remote desktop, and in the past have done so to Terminal Server sessions running on Win2k Server (although we did have some problems with that one from time to time). I see from another comment that you connect to Win2k boxes; I suspect that the Terminal Services that ships with 2k may be somewhat deficient in that respect. Might be worth seeing if there's an updated version available (if so, then you should also get support for sharing local resources and copy/pasting files across the rdesktop session)

Re:For Windows platforms...

[gad_zuki!]

The session issue and two user limitation are for win2k server. Thats what I mostly used TS for. I cant even remember playing with this stuff on XP, probably because im so used to the ssh/tighvnc combo.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[cocotoni]

Also, and a lot of people don't know this, you can install Terminal services manager on a XP machine (from WS2003 resource kit), and connect to the machine you want to shadow.

Then you can remote control even the console session. Work's great for helping people out, if you don't need the hassle of remote assistance.

Re:For Windows platforms...

[dublin]

TS is superior to all VNC products, period. No one can develop something like TS without full access to a lot of windows code.

That's because the RDP protocol just flat kicks the VNC protocol's butt. If all (or even most) of the issue was hooking the video driver, then UltraVNC would be as fast as RDP implementations - but it's nowhere even close.

Big Question: the RDP protocol is (IIRC) publicly documented by MS - why hasn't anyone written an RDP client/server set for Unix/Linux, so we can all get the benefit of the superior protocol performance of RDP. (And even it the protocol is not publicly documented, what it's doing is relatively straightforward and would be *much* easier than what the Samba team's done to figure out and document the SMB protocol...

(For that matter, now that Novell's got open source religion, why can't we get them to open-source NCP, so we can all use a network filesystem that clearly outclasses both SMB and NFS? Is there still an NCP client included in newer versions of Windows? (It was there as recently as NT4 and I think W2K...))

Re:For Windows platforms...

[drinkypoo]

elefino but there is a RDP client called rdesktop. It sucks. I built the latest version and it almost never worked. An old version in m4i (midori linux for the iopener) worked much better. Gonna stick with VNC or X's own functionality for Unix for the forseeable future, as well as VNC for making Unix systems view Windows desktops.

RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[sgeye]

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.

Re:RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[Malc]

I use TightVNC 1.2.9 and it doesn't have a file transfer function. It would be nice if it did. The other feature I'd like is the ability to tie in to the server's authentication methods such as Active Directory.

Re:RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[PizzaFace]

I use TightVNC 1.2.9 and it doesn't have a file transfer function.

File transfer is a new feature in version 1.3.

Re:RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[Malc]

Which is a development not stable release. So no thanks.

Re:RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[pdjohe]

UltraVNC has a file transfer GUI as well as an embedded chat interface.

Additionally, they have plugins options. I use a plugin to encrypt the connection - a big plus, especially if you are typing in passwords over the connection!

Re:RealVNC, UltraVNC, TightVNC

[RESPAWN]

You aren't kidding when you say that UltraVNC has a few stability issues. I was evaluating UltraVNC for a bit at work. I had the server installed on my PC and the client installed on a few other PCs that I visit somewhat regularly, but the majority of our PCs have RealVNC viewer on them. All too often I ran into an issue where sending Ctrl+Alt+Del from the Real VNC viewer to the UltraVNC server would cause my computer to restart. I never had this issue from the UltraVNC viewers, but I only had that on a few computers. Eventually, I went back to RealVNC and decided that UltraVNC was too unstable to invest the necessary time to roll it out to the rest of the PCs.

Re:VNC???

[codergeek42]

VNC == Virtual Network Computing

Basically allows you to do grahpical things and 'remote control' a computer over a network. You may want to read more about it on Wikipedia...

gpl

[wikinerd]

The first question is which VNC programs are GPL. This is the most important factor in finding the best VNC out there.

Re:gpl

[ICA]

Yep, just like the most important factor in choosing a Linux distro is finding the one that calls itself GNU/Linux.

Re:gpl

[Frogbert]

What was that flying over your head?

Re:gpl

[Antique Geekmeister]

VNC used to be built on top of MIT's X11 distribution, which had its own licensing. These days, I believe they're using Xorg distributions and the corresponding Xorg license, which is compatible with GPL software.

As near as I can tell, they gave up on using the XFree86 code base when the XFree86 folks got rather strange about their licensing.

Re:gpl

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Surely they should all be *GPL* if they are based on the code. Thats the brilliant point of it?

If they are based on the code, and if original AT&T VNC was GPL'ed (I'm not sure if it was).

The protocol was published free; even if it hadn't been, it would have been visible in the source. Anyone who reimplements the protocol can license his implementation however he chooses. That's the brilliant point of it. More freedom than the GPL - and any VNC server and VNC client will be able to connect to each other.

RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[hendersj]

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.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[hendersj]

Additional comment/answer to question in the story, RAdmin does scale the screen; it also has a configurable polling interval.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[rikkards]

I didn't find PCA 10.5 too bad. Try remote console into a workstation over a 64k satellite link :) Painful but not as bad as I would have expected.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[hendersj]

Used to do PCAW over a satellite connection as well in a previous job - it wasn't too bad, (our connection was assymetrical, which made things interesting, and it was a shared video/data pipe); latency is going to be a problem for many applications, though - so if the author of the article has a satellite connection they need to work over, I would highly recommend testing in that envioronment.

The satellite connection I used to use was MMV through a couple of Hughes' High Earth Orbit geostationary satellites - nothing like a > 2s latency. :-)

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[mallfouf]

I've been using Radmin for the last few years. It's a really good app, works over any bandwith connection, resolution, and all flavors of Windows. It allows File Transfer, Telnet, View only, Full Control, and Remote Shutdown or Restart. Radmin takes over the desktop, so any user sitting in front of the monitor, will see all your actions.

I use Remote Desktop on a daily basis. Remote Desktop creates a "Virtual Desktop" in memory, that only you see (Windows 2000 & 2003 version). It doesn't allow file transfer natively, unless you map a drive through your connection, or use a 3rd party software called WtsFtp. It's only available in Windows Server 2000, 2003, and Windows XP. I believe the Windows XP version allows only 1 user to be logged into the machine at a time. A Remote Desktop Connection is considered to be 1 user. I use both those applications on a daily basis.

Remote Desktop is faster than Radmin, which is way faster than various flavors of VNC i've used over the past.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[jayhawk88]

Another vote for RAdmin. I use it to manage all my Windows servers.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[Gailin]

I also use Radmin daily, and have for 2+ years. Low overhead, uses a single port for all its communications, and you can encrypt your traffic for what its worth(implementation quality unknown).

I have gotten my $30 worth and then some.

Gailin

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[Steev]

If you launch Remote Desktop with the /console command line option, you can connect to an existing, logged-in console session.

i.e., "%SystemRoot%\System32\mstsc.exe /console"

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[mallfouf]

Sweeet, Thanks for the tip.

Re:RAdmin has the lowest overhead

[Anonymous Coward]

The /console parameter only works with Windows 2003 servers. You'll still be connected to the "Virtual Desktop" in 2000.

In the Windows 2003 version of the RDP client, you can also use the /CONSOLE parameter in the server name input box if you don't want to modify the shortcut or the Run dialog box.

Definitely radmin... but that's not a vnc.

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Check out TWD Industries

[Jonah Hex]

If your looking to purchase an enterprise level solution, check out Remote Anything w/Directory Server

Small footprint (90 KB): a single executable file, no DLLs, no drivers.
Portable so Mac, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD versions will be available.
One-click installation+configuration allowing on-demand deployments.
Remotely invisible: impossibility to detect and attack Master/Slave*.
Transparently reach Slave PCs behind firewalls & routers with Masters*.
Auto-update Master & Slaves without interruption of service or reboot*.
Non-repudiation with RSA 2048-Bit keys + AES 128-Bit session keys*.
[*] Requires TWD Industries' Directory Server (DS).

The DS option offers database backup, multiple servers, and excellent NAT traversal and security. Controlling a slave is pretty much comparable to working with other VNC products, lots of options to speed things up, plus the configurability of the slave client is really full featured with all possible User Policy options an Admin could dream of.

Jonah Hex

Re:Check out TWD Industries

[s4m7]

Portable so Mac, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD versions will be available.

okay, when? this would be great.
Here's where this gets sticky.

impossibility to detect and attack Master/Slave

Uh-huh. Sure. I mean if there's traffic, it's detectable. Might not be easy, but come on--as if their directory service has a magical packet cloaking device. Ok... could be firewalling. that's not necessarily "impossibility to detect."
I call shenanigans.

Re:Check out TWD Industries

[King_TJ]

I agree! I've been using this product for a while now to provide remote assistance to corporate clients, so we can avoid traveling on-site just to troubleshoot something relatively simple like email configuration mistakes or incorrect/lost printer driver setups.

The real "power" of Remote Anything comes with using the directory service "middle-man", but the product also seems surprisingly fast. I used RAdmin in the past and thought it was by far the fastest remote control package out, but Remote Anything almost feels like it's built from the same codebase.

Re:Check out TWD Industries

[Jonah Hex]

From their site: Linux* / Mac* / Windows (95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP). Using any mix of the operating systems mentioned above. RA is written in portable C++ code. Unlike the competition (they use Windows internals like GDI drivers and system hooks) we are not tied with Windows. The "*" of course leads to an "available soon" at the bottom of the page, however this proposed cross platform support is new since the last time I checked their website out (approx 2 months ago), and they have a great track record of fast releases and excellent technical basis.

Uh-huh. Sure. I mean if there's traffic, it's detectable. Might not be easy, but come on--as if their directory service has a magical packet cloaking device. Ok... could be firewalling. that's not necessarily "impossibility to detect."

Yes there's traffic, but since I already typed out a long post about the NAT traversal I'll just mention that the Master or Slave clients (they are seperate, slave is only 90k!) "phones home" to the Directory Server and then takes it's orders from it, it's not like VNC/PCAW where it's constantly listening on a port waiting for an (possibly malicious) incoming connection. (ignoring additional security layers like SSH tunnels etc) So no magic, just judicious control over where the handshake starts and how the Slave/Master gets in touch with the DS, which also has the benefit of maximum ease of NAT traversal in most common environments.

Jonah Hex

Re:Check out TWD Industries

[s4m7]

interesting.

The way the original blurb was written, I took it to mean that an active connection was undetectable. It's much different to say that it's not an open service, and therefore not vulnerable to scanning.

Thanks for the extra info!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:RealVNC

[hendersj]

Personally, I only trust any VNC client (and I use RealVNC and TightVNC regularly) if I tunnel it over SSH. The protocol itself isn't terribly complex, and there are plenty of ways to obtain passwords off the wire (the password encryption algorithm, last time I checked, wasn't very secure).

how remote is the pc

[nri]

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

Re:VNC???

[cyber_rigger]

For those of us who don't know what the hell VNC is, anyone care to explain?

It's like remote control.
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/VNC

Multiple OS?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I need one that works well with Linux and Windows. Having problems as of late with the default Redhat ES package and Windows clients.

Re:Multiple OS?

[Kris_J]

I use the standard (Debian) VNC server install with x11vnc on a Linux box and connect to it over the 'Net from a Windows XP PC running an old version of the normal old VNC viewer. I've also used the standard xvncviewer to view a couple of Windows XP PCs over a LAN. I've even added a Pocket PC client into the mix over a wireless network. Functional, but not always the fastest.

Re:Multiple OS?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Thanks! Ever try to get VNC running over different subnets locally? Going to try your advice tomorrow.

Re:Multiple OS?

[Kris_J]

VNC running over different subnets locally?

The only place where I have separate subnets, they're specifically separated with no route between them, but if you've got your gateway setup properly, it should just work. Make sure ports 5900-5905 are not blocked or are NATted or whatever. Does other traffic go from subnet to subnet okay?

Re:Multiple OS?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Yeah, other traffic is fine. It's all internal so there shouldn't be any ports blocked.

RAdmin

[xrayspx]

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.

Re:RAdmin

[zulux]

You can set an intermediate machine at that location for RAdmin to bounce off of.

You can do this with VNC really easily - if you can log into *any* SSH server behind a firewall, you can setup a tunnel to any inside VNC enabled desktop:

1) SSH into a remote server.
2) With OpenSSH - at a blank command prompt type the SSH escape code: ~!
3) At the SSH prompt type in: -L 5940 192.168.0.40:5900
This sets up a tunnel on your computer "localhost" from port 5940 to the inside computer at 192.168.0.40 to port 5900 (the VNC port).
4) Log in with VNC: Tell it to connect to localhost or 127.0.0.1 at port 5940. With RealVNC and most other VNCs at the computer prompty type in: localhost:5940
5) login and enjoy.

With PUTTY - you can setup the tunnel unig the nice GUI.

PS) Don't forget - if your remote SSH server has Samba, you can type in: nmblookup AComputerName
to get the ip address of any Windows computer.

Re:RAdmin

[Trepalium]

PS) Don't forget - if your remote SSH server has Samba, you can type in: nmblookup AComputerName to get the ip address of any Windows computer.

Or just install winbind and set up your nsswitch to look for hosts in wins (you don't need a wins server to do this, either).

Re:RAdmin

[xrayspx]

All good points, however, vastly more PITA than hitting "connect through host" in the RAdmin client.

I assumed from the question that the network in question is all or primarily windows. Assuming he'd have to install cygwin first and set up sshd in Windows, that makes the time investment much higher.

That said, ssh tunneling works great, use it every day to hop around networks which can't directly see each other. However, you can't tell me that the 4 steps you listed are easier than a checkbox labelled "Connect Through Host" on the client side only.

SSH tunneling is far from a QED solution to your average Windows admin, believe me, I know from hard experience in trying to explain it. Heh.

Re:RAdmin

[zulux]

SSH tunneling is far from a QED solution to your average Windows admin, believe me, I know from hard experience in trying to explain it. Heh.


Quite true. Most Windows admins still miss NetBEUI ;)

Putty does have a tunneling system - so you don't have to setup Cygwin/OpenSSH if you can't wait for it to install.

Re:RAdmin

[xrayspx]

Putty does have a tunneling system - so you don't have to setup Cygwin/OpenSSH if you can't wait for it to install.
I'm not sure I understand. On the intermediate (tunnel) server, wouldn't you need an sshd running so that the client could connect, with putty, to set up the tunnel, or can putty handle both ends? If so, rock on putty.

Re:RAdmin

[zulux]

or can putty handle both ends? If so, rock on putty.


Unfortunatly no. Putty is just a ssh client.

But... it's pretty easy to add an sshd to an XP/Win2000 box:

basic info

Cygwin/SSHD info

I like TightVNC

[wschalle]

I use it on all my boxes... with an SSH tunnel of course.

Re:I like TightVNC

[metrickarma]

I also use tightvnc on my gentoo box for a fluxbox or openbox linux desktop, its very fast and easy to use. But as someone else noted Remote Desktop on windows is by far the best. Very quick on everything, has sound, if you're on lan you can even watch videos over it. Its very nice but for linux i do think tightvnc is good. I'm going to try UltraVNC as many other people have suggested, just my 2 Cents.

VNC + Windows

[wirwzd]

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.

Pinky

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?

Re:Pinky

[binux]

More answers to that one.

Re:Pinky

[rbb]

...and even more answers to that one.

ssh + X forwarding

[yuri benjamin]

In a *nix-only environment, I prefer ssh with X forwarding.
I've heard there are products that serve X over low bandwidth.

Re:ssh + X forwarding

[sholden]

I use that every day, but it's a different beast. You can't connect to you machine at work from home and bring up the window you were working with. You can run the application just fine, but that's not as useful in some situations.

At least I don't know of a way to do so - I'd be happy for someone to tell me I'm wrong and tell me how to do it...

Re:ssh + X forwarding

[yuri benjamin]

There used to be a program called xmove which is the x11 equivalent to screen, but it is unmaintained and broken, I've been told.

Re:ssh + X forwarding

[Goalie_Ca]

ssh + X forwarding (Score:4, Interesting)

Proof that the majority of slashdot users use windows!

Re:ssh + X forwarding

[yuri benjamin]

Probably. *nix users tend to take stuff like the network transparency of X11 for granted, while windows users may find it interesting that linux even has a gui, let alone a network transparent one.

If I had a $1 for every time a windows user says to me "Linux, isn't that like DOS?" I'd be richer than I am now.

Re:ssh + X forwarding

[MikeBabcock]

I sure take X forwarding for granted.

I ssh into a server, run a GUI app, ssh into another server, run a different GUI app.

Actually, I double-click icons that do "ssh servername appname" and my ssh-agent handles the logins for me.

Yay X.

tight

[michaelbuddy]

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.

Hmmm..

[disbaldman]

Darn, and I always thought the best came from microsoft!

Tight VNC through compressed SSH tunnel

[Lord Kano]

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

tightVNC optimized for the windows enterprise...

[ManyLostPackets]

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)

X11 for *nix, PCDuo for Windows

[Phloyd]

Nothing beats a straight up X session for unix & linux. My favorite remote control program for windows is PCDuo

TightVNC

[Bruzer]

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.

TightVNC is awesome

[Scorpio1]

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.

Tridia VNC Pro

[DamienMcKenna]

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

TridiaVNC .

[Random Luck]

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.

Windows Terminal Services

[DogDude]

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.

Re:Windows Terminal Services

[Mr. No Skills]

It's good, no doubt. Except it doesn't work at all on my Solaris box, and I can't find an OpenVMS driver anywhere.

And where's the Palm OS install kit for WTS so I can reboot from outside the building?

NoMachine NX client

[PDXRedcat]

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

Re:NoMachine NX client

[Zardus]

I second that. I have FreeNX running on my desktop and use it as a home base for my laptop, and its amazing in terms of how responsive it is. I've connected from Starbucks to my desktop before and felt like I was sitting at the machine.

The only drawback of NX is the complete lack of docs available. Still if anyone is interested, there's a debian-centered site about NX at Kalyxo and there's always NoMachine's site at nomachine.com.

Re:NoMachine NX client

[Zardus]

Oh, and I forgot. The suspend/resume feature of NX is simply amazing. Just send a close event to the window (such as alt-f4 or whatever) and NX will offer to suspent the session and keep the apps running until you reconnect. It'll also do this automatically if you lose connection.

Of course, this was all previously covered on Slashdot.

Re:NoMachine NX client

[CoolHnd30]

I'm using the Debian NX server, and haven't had any luck 'suspending' my session. It won't let me send a close to the window locally. The only way I can close it is to logout of the session, or Xkill it. When I xkill it, it won't pick up the previous session. Do you have any more info on this 'suspend' feature ??

Re:NoMachine NX client

[Zardus]

Well, from my experience, to suspend a session, you must have xmessage installed on the machine that you're connecting to (ie, the one serving up the apps). Then you should be able to send a close to the NX window on the computer you're connecting from (the only way I know to do this for a fullscreen NX session is with a close keybinding) and the server will use xmessage to ask you whether you want to suspend or terminate the session.

If that fails, there's also the hackish way of suspending, which is to manually kill the local instance of nxssh.orig. Unlike killing the actual window, which causes NX to terminate the session, this will cause NX to completely lose connection without terminating, and it'll automatically suspend. The downside to this method is that there are some processes left running on the server that usually die when you suspend normally, but ssh'ing in and killing them usually does the job (these processes, for a server serving a single NX session, are everything owned by "nx" but the first four, I think). Sometimes you'll still get a message locally telling you that it lost connection to the session and that the session should be terminated, but just hit yes on that cause it can no longer talk to the server to do anything with your session.

The first method above works for me now, and I used to use the second before I figured out that I needed xmessage installed on the server. Now the only thing I can't figure out is how to have the mouse wheel forwarded.

Re:NoMachine NX client

[CoolHnd30]

Well, I'm still not having much luck with it.... and I DO have xmessage on the server machine. My scroll wheel works just fine, though ;) hehe

Re:NoMachine NX client

[Zardus]

Do you have version 1.4.0 on both the client and the server? That might be necessary for the suspending.

How'd you get the scroll wheel going? It just worked out of the box?

Depending on your needs

[pjcreath]

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.

How to start Remote Desktop remotely

[daveschroeder]

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.

Ultra VNC

[schnits0r]

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.

Re:Ultra VNC

[lifer_red]

> has several other features I can't remember. ... just like all quality software!

Re:locking/unlocking desktop - otherwise useless

[Random Luck]

If you are using VNC from another NT/2000/XP box, hold the shift key and then use the CTRL-ALT-DEL key sequence. This will bring up the "Windows Security" window you seek.

Isn't Radmin encrypted?

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

My opinion

[__aailob1448]

I've tried RealVNC, Radmin and Windows remote assistance. Surprisingly enough (or not), WRA appears to be the fastest of them all, followed by radmin then realvnc.

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 .RA file and replace the internal IP within (192.168.x.x usually) with his public IP.

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.

Re:tightVNC optimized for the windows enterprise..

[ManyLostPackets]

Yeah, I'm to stupid to live. This is it

Turning in my geek card...

Re:RealVNC

[hendersj]

Yeah, there is an encryption present for the password, but there are programs out there that will crack it fairly quickly; according to the tightvnc site:

for password encryption, VNC uses a DES-encrypted challenge-response scheme, where the password is limited by 8 characters, and the effective DES key length is 56 bits

(Reference: http://www.tightvnc.com/faq.html)

I also had found one once upon a time that would crack a password stored in the Windows registry of a VNC Server, so make sure that registry is secure if you're using Windows.

NoMachine hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

VNC Genealogy

[rwa2]

What we really need is some sort of family tree so we can trace how the various forks of VNC developed...

For our part, here's what we've settled on:

Win32 UltraVNC Linux / *NIX TightVNC for virtual framebuffers x11vnc for sharing out :0 (run from a command line as

x11vnc -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!

Re:VNC Genealogy

[elmegil]

yah, putting a password in a command line argument is so....secure....

Re:VNC Genealogy

[rwa2]

It's supposed to have a -passwdfile option so you could point it to ~/.vnc/passwd (I don't know why it just defaults to that). But I found that that just didn't work for some reason, at least with the Dag Wiers rpm.

Still eagerly awaiting a better *NIX option for sharing out :0 ... newer gnome and kde dists are supposed to have something, just haven't had a chance to play with them yet.

Re:VNC Genealogy

[glesga_kiss]

I had the password option working propertly with my last employer, on the original VNC. It's not present on the Windows version however. Just take the file produced by vncpassword and point the client at it.

I like the password option, because if you can see my VNC servers, you've already cracked either my firewall or ssh forwarding. The games over at that point regardless.

Also, if you are running localhost servers, by definition you can already see the password file. And as it's in your homedir, any other NFS mounts can use it, so it's good for jumping around a properly configured LAN.

Proud to be a VNC user since back when VNC was the only VNC

Re:RealVNC

[hendersj]

*sigh*

I hate when I write something in a hurry and it looks fine until I post. That last sentence:

I also had found one once upon a time that would crack a password stored in the Windows registry of a VNC Server, so make sure that registry is secure if you're using Windows.

Should read:

I also had found a program one once upon a time that would crack a password stored in the Windows registry of a VNC Server, so make sure that registry is secure if you're using Windows.

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[Antique Geekmeister]

VNC is trivially tunneled over SSH, or over SSL for the Java-based server that allows a VNC session to be published to any Java-capable browser. That feature alone gets it a jusge bonus award over the other that require a client-end software package to be installed. Overall, it's not typically faster than an OS-specific client and server, but that cross-platform availability is a huge deal, especially if you're cheap and want to use it on thousands of potential servers in a corporate or large academic environment.

Also historically, the original VNC was extremely robust over multiple OS's, very lightweight on your CPU on each end, and extremely forgiving of low-bandwidth connections such as modems. The Java based console is also being used by a bunch of blade server management tools to provide the IP-based console access to the individual blades.

Last, VNC is ectremely useful for multiple console presentations, either with the other client's mice and keyboards disabled for the VNC session or with them active for shared screen use.

Now, that said, VNC is not that secure in and of itself. There are various issues, such as its common use of high-numbered network ports and the unlikelihood of local firewalls to block them and the resulting ability of some smart-aleck leaving a VNC server running on your Windows desktop so they can observe you remotely because you're not clever or experienced enough to notice the little flag on your screen that says VNC is active. There's also its practice of insisting on storing a local user key for the VNC session: once someone has that key and either brute-force cracks it, or reads you typing in your password over your shoulder, they can take over any VNC server you might run.

This is why some of us really prefer to SSH-tunnel sessions, so that all the X-windows traffic of VNC is encrypted, and so that it's much tougher to steal the passwords to log into such a connection.

J2ME VNC

[mlk]

Yeap, defently the best...

Its extra slow, has no inbuild security and the screen res of your mobile phone! :D

I heard..

[SCSi]

BackOrphus is the gold standard for remote administration.. :)

Here's the advantages of each (since noone's said)

[mbourgon]

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?

Wrong...

[node159]

RealVNC uses the DFMirage hook display driver, these I suspect are used by UltraVNC as well as a host of other ones I suspect.

Other tightvnc features

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:Other tightvnc features

[Myen]

According to the announcement of DFMirage, the video driver isn't actually open source:

While the driver is not Open Source, it can be freely used with TightVNC (see the LICENSE.txt file, within the distribution archive).

This would mean kudos for the guys that provided it, I guess? Encryption can indeed be done via SSH, but then you'd have SCP for file transfers too :)

(I'm currently on cygwin + openssh + RDP on XP, so I have no idea how well TightVNC is right now.)

Scaling ...

[BeatdownGeek]

I believe TightVNC and RealVNC have scaling, i.e. the client window can be a different size (I don't know if this is dependent more on the server or client). This is one thing I haven't been able to do with OSX VNC.

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.

Re:Scaling ...

[lifer_red]

I'm pretty sure passwords are sent challenge-response - yes, that's right (see http://www.realvnc.com/howitworks.html#5) Not the most amazing, but better than nothing. Of course, if you unlock a remote desktop then all those keystrokes are sent plaintext. Unless you tunnel it over SSH. UltraVNC allows encryption modules with it's DSM (Data Stream Modification) mechanism. As far as I know, you have to use a third-party SSH tunnel for TightVNC and RealVNC. UltraVNC seems to reject connections occasionally if you don't set the server to Poll Full Screen (but why wouldn't you?).

RDesktop != VNC

[rmdyer]

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

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[myowntrueself]

"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"

Thank you for expressing that clearly!

It seems to be the biggest thing that people planning on using MS Rdesktop fail to grasp and will *not* believe until you demonstrate it in action.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[Malc]

"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."

No it doesn't. It's just how they've implemented Terminal Services under Win XP - they don't allow concurrent users.

"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"

Try creating a filter graph for DVD playback. It won't work.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[rmdyer]

True...and false. You are correct, VNC gives you a running average of your overall display. Sometimes this can be a great benefit as you have described. Sometimes though you need to request and entire screen update which is a little annoying. However RD can be put into different modes so that different effects can be turned off. These modes are called the "Experience Levels", and can be used to reduce the traffic depending on your network connection. You can turn off the desktop background, disable window contents dragging, disable menu and window animations, disable themes, and enable bitmap caching. All these things tend to improve the performance over VNC.

One of the extra problems with RD though is that it uses TCP. I have had the experience of being on a bad network connection where TCP would not get through, but UDP would. In that case, VNC worked great.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[Bellesarius]

A small proviso.. file and print sharing through terminal services isn't actually tunneled or secured. It just simplifies the process of network mapping drives and printers via LAN SMB protocol. If you run term services through a firewall you'll only be able to copy stuff through the clipboard.

Citrix does allow you to run file and print through firewalls because it tunnels them through their ICA protocol.

RDP is just video with sound grafted on. They have no interest in making it a full fledged client.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[gregorio]

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.

Actually, no. RD is faster than VNC because RD sends *high level* information about what's happening on the screen instead of sending every single pixel involved in the operation. Ex: When the server's GDI subsystem draws a gradient window caption, the other side just receives a "Gradient Caption" command, instead of a zillion bytes worth of pixels.

There is no kernel space conspiracy in this case. BTW, there is *no* kernel space conspiracy in *every single case* where Windows is better than (put your favorite open source project here). Slashdotters talk about kernel space like it's some kind of magical execution privilege where code is executed at 10GHz.

When you're dealing with networking software, you still have to properly format your data to send it across the network, and there is no kernel magic that will help you with that. The same thing also applies to most kinds of software: all the data processing that your application depends upon can not be replaced by any kind of "kernel-space magic", you still need an efficient implementation, and you will have to do it by yourself.

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.

Well, if you're not sure about how stuff works, then... Well, nevermind.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[cortana]

That's because you might be STEALING frames from the decoded DVD (with Ethereal, or something). Microsoft, in assocation with the Department of "Justice" and the MPAA, is helping you avoid inadvertantly funding TERROR! Think of all the trouble Microsoft has just helped you avoid--and besides, orange just isn't your colour!

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[klui]

I have TightVNC installed on my Windows XP box. Most of the time I use Remote Desktop, but I have found that after I use RD, and I try to use VNC, all I get is a black screen. This is probably the screen saver of some sort. The black screen doesn't go away unless I login using RD while my VNC session is still active.

Any way to remove/disable this black screen??

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[JoeZeppy]

"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"

Thank you for expressing that clearly!

It seems to be the biggest thing that people planning on using MS Rdesktop fail to grasp and will *not* believe until you demonstrate it in action.

XP also includes a Remote Assistance function allowing support personnel to connect to a users desktop and view their session. Includes a chat screen and other helpful goodies.

It's a pain to use, since the user has to request help through email or MS's IM client, sending a token of sorts to the helper.

We use a product called Dameware, which is pretty fast, and also allows a push install to PC's that don't currently have the software installed.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[moonbender]

I think when he referred to "kernel space" he was referring to the system authority that has access to the high level informations you referred to.
The Windows VNC servers all don't have a clue about any or at least much of the semantics on the screen: it's just one big bitmap. Okay, they have figured out about there being various windows, and a main window, so they're starting to acquire additional "meta-information" to the bitmap.
The window manager - that is, an X server on Unix and the operating system ("kernel space") itself in Windows -, on the other hand, already has access to all of this information and can fairly easily and efficiently encode this high-level knowledge and transmit it to a client. Of course the client has to do a lot more work when it only gets high level information - VNC clients can be really dumb.

This applies to polling, incidently: Windows does not need to poll because it's already getting notified of all the user input and it is involved in most of the on-screen changes. (Not all of them, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if Remote Desktop displayed a blank with some video players similar to the way a screenshot only displays a black rectangle.) Previously, the Windows VNC servers had no way of being informed of window changes, so they had to poll. These days, they can insert themselves closer to the operating system ("kernel space") using video drivers and get access to more meta-information and can avoid a lot of overhead.

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[Malc]

If that were an issue then why do commercial players have screen capture options?

Re:RDesktop != VNC

[Jozer99]

A lot of the drawing functionality is not done at all on the host machine. Instead of compressed images of the entire desktop, RD sends to the client a rough description of what is going on in the desktop. For instance, it sends the background once, and tells the client that it will always be the background. For applications, it actually sends screen shots, but explorer is pretty much suggested. This is what allowed those wireless monitors Microsoft sold to be [somewhat] useable, even over 802.11b. It also requireles a lot more processing power on the clients part, hence the 400 Mhz XScale processor, which would be overkill for a simple image decompressor / framebuffer.

Is a VPN safe communication for VNC?

[Futurepower(R)]

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?

Re:Is a VPN safe communication for VNC?

[hendersj]

VPN will protect you against outside hackers - DES encryption tends to be 56-bit, though, if memory servers (and it may well not), 3DES is a bit more secure.

What the VPN won't prevent is people inside the firewall from sniffing the traffic. This is why I use SSH tunnels to connect over VNC to systems inside my own firewalls and over VPN connections.

I do tend to run Linux/Unix more often than Windows, though, so setting up the SSH tunnel is pretty simple (it's installed by default on most of the OSes I use); it's not difficult to set up on Windows, though, and does provide an extra layer of security. Make sure you pass -2 to the SSH client though, because SSH tends to default to trying both V1 and V2 (this will depend on the implementation of SSH and SSHD used) and there is an issue with SSHv1 that can be exploited.

For Windows, I personally use Cygwin http://www.cygwin.com/, but there are plenty of other alternatives out there that don't have the installation overhead that Cygwin does.

I like TightVNC

[bigberk]

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.

Whatever you choose, don't mix and match.

[Deal-a-Neil]

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.

Use Damage

[Nailer]

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.

Re:Use Damage

[Spy Hunter]

Is this for VNC serving another running X server? Does that use polling?

Yes and yes. Being able to remotely connect to a running X session is the main reason to use VNC on X anyway; if you want a new X session you might as well just run an X server locally (excellent free X servers are now available for windows, including a java applet one and a port of XFree86 that is integrated with Windows).

IMHO X should support moving/duplicating sessions and single apps, and I believe work to that effect is progressing (slowly) on freedesktop.org. When it is complete (and combined with NX compression for slow links) it will make VNC for X mostly redundant.

Re:Use Damage

[timeOday]

Being able to remotely connect to a running X session is the main reason to use VNC on X anyway; if you want a new X session you might as well just run an X server locally

No sir! For being designed around a network protocol, it's the height of irony that X doesn't work very well over slow links anyways! VNC is better.

The reason - VNC allows fast-moving detail to be lost, while X bottles it up and draws it all, no longer how long it takes. Say you're running a web browser with an animated .gif banner ad. X will make sure it shoves every frame of that thing across the network, while VNC will only show you a frame every now and then, the sampling rate depending on bandwidth.

Re:Use Damage

[Spy Hunter]

Not necessarily, if you're using NX compression. NX performs smart caching and could easily choose to ignore a few frames of that gif. Furthermore it is much more efficient when drawing text and mouse pointer movement, and many other optimizations are made possible by its integration lower in the window system than VNC. Try it.

Re:Use Damage

[Gekke Eekhoorn]

Sure, but NX doesn't allow you to disconnect and reconnect to a running session.

At my workplace we use VNC sessions to a big honking server for desktop sessions that are very fast, shareable, and can be looked at from work, home, lab, etc. Very handy.

(I know that NX allows you to disconnect and reconnect, but all it does is suspend the X server, so that programs that send X events just hang. Not very useful.)

Re:Use Damage

[Spy Hunter]

... which is why I said AFTER X gets that capability, which is being worked on at freedesktop.org, then along with NX it will make VNC on X redundant. In my original post.

don't disappoint me like that

[nomadic]

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...

Re:locking/unlocking desktop - otherwise useless

[mebob]

um every one that I've used does.

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[Atzanteol]

Not all Windows machines support remote desktop. Besides, it's not what the user asked for.

Recording VNC

[benow]

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.

problem with VNC

[unk1911]

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 :(

Re:problem with VNC

[ProfFalcon]

OK, your IS security folks will hate me.

Run SSH listening on port 80. Use VNC through an SSH tunnel. Works like a charm provided your firewall is not forcing you through a proxy too. In that case, it get's uglier. Run SSH at home listening on port 80, use a product like HTTP-Tunnel from http://www.http-tunnel.com/ to go through the proxy.

Have fun!

Re:problem with VNC

[unk1911]

would the GNU httptunnel work as well?

Re:MS Remote Desktop Connection on Mac OS X

[xtermin8]

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.

VNC Encryption Standard

[_Sprocket_]

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).

Re:VNC Encryption Standard

[smcavoy]

I'm guessing silly laws in countries that many developers reside in.

Re:VNC Encryption Standard

[dbIII]

Why not? Why must I tunnel VNC over SSH?

There is SshVNC, but I've found it a little disappointing. It isn't really for the newbie, not even the tab key works as expected, and for those that aren't newbies it's almost as easy to set up a tunnel. I'm considering just TightVNC to x11vnc over a VPN for my boss (windows machine with no X at home, linux desktop at work with a lot of stuff running over X from solaris) since that seems the way to get something usable with encryption.

Dameware

[Anti_zeitgeist]

Has anyone ever used dameware? What do you all think of that versus the rest of these?

Re:Dameware

[MazTaim]

My experience with it in bullet form:

Pro:
- You don't need to have the application installed on the remote desktop.
- You can run in full-screen mode
- No annoying "dot" cursor

Con:
- Default setup behavior doesn't uninstall remote client software after remote session is ended.
- Pricey

I really wouldn't call it a "stand out" application. There are many capable alternatives that are free or cheap either from the OS distributor (Remotedesktop [MS] or VNC variants [linux/bsd/etc...]) or 3rd party (VNC variants, etc...) and have the same or similar features.

Re:Dameware

[silvwolf]

The fact that I don't need anything installed on the remote desktop is a big reason I like using it at work.

We have a mix of Win2k and XP clients.. about 3000 machines spread around 15 buildings. We have some sort of custom packaged SMS remote control, but it requires that the remote user grant permission before opening the connection. Don't have that 'problem' with DameWare, it just opens a small window on the remote machine showing what computer and user is connected (as well as a computer icon in the systray) - I can't close the window, only the remote user can, so they know when I'm connected. Not having that 'problem' has come in handy many times when doing after hours work and I need to see the user's desktop. For us, the price was worth it in time saved over the SMS remote because we didn't have to track down a random system someplace on campus.

When I disconnection, I just choose "Remove Service" from the menu instead of simply clicking the X to close the window. No big deal.

Not sure if the Mini-Remote has file transfer capabilities, but the full version allows has it.

Works well for our needs.

Re:Dameware

[tonyray]

You don't need to pay for Dameware. Just turn off your firewall and it will appear on your computer all by itself.

Re:Dameware

[Forbman]

MmmmmDameWare. It's cheaper than deploying Windows Terminal Server. Sure, there's Remote Desktop, but that's just for XP.

DameWare is pretty potent stuff for Windows boxes. DameWare is far more than the Mini-remotecontrol.

Re:Dameware

[Forbman]

Mini RemoteControl doesn't, but another thing that is cool about it, compared at least to Terminal Services, is that you can paste from the Mini-RemoteControl's window.

Dameware NT Utilities also lets you open a remote command-line interface, just don't launch any interactive Windows apps with it, as it brings the remote machine to a crawl because it's trying to deal with opening app windows w/o having anything to open them on. This remote command line is great for doing command-line stuff that is too slow to do over network shares, especially over a WAN/dialup connection or with the File Manager.

The Services applet in Dameware NT Utilities is just a tad more powerful than Services.msc, also.
Many things to like about Dameware NTUtilities. Of course, you can now do a lot of the same stuff with WMI...

My only gripe with Dameware is that it is predisposed for you having a Domain Controller. It's kind of dumb when in a workgroup environment.

One missing capability

[Groo Wanderer]

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

Re:One missing capability

[Jonah Hex]

From your description of what your trying to do, I think this would fufill your requirements nicely! Check my post on TWD Industries Remote Anything w/Directory Server above, the slave can connect thru any NAT to the DS, and the Master connects to the DS to tunnel back thru to the slave. (diagram+desc) All it takes is one port forward from firewall to DS to let any slave (behind who knows what NAT/network config) automatically make itself available to Master clients. Simple enough, but it seems most other VNC products are more concerned with "one to one" rather than the "many to one" situation where you simply can't deal with reconfiguring someone's router via phone just to try and VNC them, you need a solution that works no matter what's in between them and you.

Jonah Hex

Re:One missing capability

[Coventry]

This is actualy and old feature. You can set most, if not all, vnc servers to connect to a remote machine and wait for that machine to 'pick up' the connection - thus allowing control of machines behind a NAT.

This is implemented via a 2 step process. #1, on the remote controling machine, start a viewer in 'listen' mode - this will await an inbound connection to start a viewer session.
#2 - On the VNC server machine, 'add a new client' - in RealVNC, this is done by right-clicking the winvnc icon in the systray, and selecting 'add new client' - this will then prompt you for the remote machine's address. Type in the address of the remote machine, and enjoy.

Of course, scheduling or initiating the setup can be a pain, but it works.

Utlr@VNC has my vote, Hands down.

[Hidyman]

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.

Re:Utlr@VNC has my vote, Hands down.

[CharlieHedlin]

I am not a cryptographer, but the encryption support of UltraVNC looks to be very poor. I think they should drop it until they can get better, as it might create a false sense of security.

RC4 is a stream cipher, and you should NEVER reuse keys for stream ciphers. It is great with SSL where public key encprytion is used to trade a one time session key. Reusing stream keys is why WEP sucks.

MS Remote Desktop Connection isn't VNC

[daveschroeder]

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.

Weeeelllll...

[spoco2]

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.

Re:Weeeelllll...

[recursiv]

I got 4 different BitTorrent clients, in succession, in an attempt to get the Jon Stewart on Crossfire clip. All of them downloaded part of it very quickly (all different amounts too), then stalled, in some cases for days. I never ran two clients simultaneously, or attempted to save files in the same location between clients.

Azureus fared the worst in my tests, It seemed nice, but it had a nasty habit of completely locking my computer. (WinXP SP2)

I'm behind a router, but I'm forwarding port 6346. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Re:Weeeelllll...

[Michael Hunt]

Yeh. 6346 is the Gnutella port.
You'll want to forward ports 6881 thru 6889 from your public IP through to the machine running BitTorrent.

Re:Weeeelllll...

[Enucite]

Actually, Azureus supports UPnP, so he probably doesn't even need to do that.

Re:Weeeelllll...

[mink]

According to the doc I read Azureus onlt needs 6881 open instead of the range.

RealVNC Spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this web page, RealVNC is spyware, ha!

Solaris, VNC and Java GUI Problem

[mpn14tech]

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.

I hate TridiaVNC

[Stone316]

It never receives updates correctly.. You either have to refresh manually or keep clicking (somewhere inactive) so the screen keeps refreshing.

Unfortunately besides that and remote desktop our company doesn't support any other products.

Mod Parent Up!

[seringen]

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.

Why not dump VNC for NX?

[mikehoskins]

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....

Re:Why not dump VNC for NX?

[Loonacy]

NX is from www.nomachine.com
FreeNX seems to be in beta status and I could only find a Debian package at http://www.kalyxo.org/debian/
If you don't run Debian, you might be able to build the source tarball that is also on that site.

Re:Why not dump VNC for NX?

[Skapare]

VNC is a relatively simple protocol that allows integrating it into graphical server programs that have a need to generate their graphics internally, and let users connect to them (something X cannot do because the client and server roles are reversed) to carry on the graphical session. By just using any VNC client, you can connect to such a server directly. The simplicity of VNC allows it to be done without much headache. Does NX work equally simple? Point me to the online specification of the NX protocol and I can see if that is so or not. My first worry is that someone said it uses SSH instead of SSL. That's a major worry right there (VNC, like virtually anything else, can be wrapped in SSL if needed).

Re:Why not dump VNC for NX?

[Loonacy]

I'm not sure about the specifications, but I do know it supports SSL encryption.

Re:big brother limits RD use

[kcb93x]

If I recall correctly, you don't need to install VNC Server...just have all the files...(say, a USB Flash Drive?) and execute the server, configure, and voila?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's all it took. Install was only for if you wanted to automate startup or put in the services, etc.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Shouldn't this be a poll question?

Re:zerg

[quarrel]

Polls tend to tell you what's popular rather than give information about what might be best for you.

rdesktop

[croweye]

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

[jwbrown77]

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.

noVNC is the best!

[AchilleTalon]

If you end up needing to use VNC, there is something badly designed in your environment, I mean, you got some Windows servers and/or desktops. Otherwise, you never ever need that stuff. After all, why do you need to run graphics apps on a server to administer it?

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?

Re:noVNC is the best!

[Zardus]

VNC does exactly that in Windows, yeah, and I think that Mandrake's (KDE's?) Desktop Sharing stuff is just VNC, so I think it can do that in Linux as well.

Re:noVNC is the best!

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

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?

From my perspective, that's exactly what VNC is most appropriate for. The "enabling the user to watch" isn't always important, but it does come in handy regularly. It's also possible to run a "view only" VNC session, for when you want to show a bunch of people how to do something by remote. (And other posters have mentioned programs which can be used to record VNC sessions for playback later.)

VNC's other major benefit is its cross-platform availability - any combination of Microsoft(r) Windows, commercial Unix, non-proprietary Unix (*BSD), Linux, MacOSX, and I would have sworn some of the PDA OS's can all connect to each other with it. It beats paying a fortune for permission to use the Webex services for it. (Webex is actually a fairly nice package, but permission to use it is somewhat expensive, geared mainly towards mid-to-large corporate environments for teleconferencing...)

The one downside VNC has is that it seems to be a little slower than some of the more restricted-availability methods (much as I hate most of MS's software design, they DID seem to do a good job getting RDP working efficiently, for example).

Re:MS Remote Desktop Connection on Mac OS X

[NMerriam]

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.

No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[stienman]

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

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[antispam_ben]

This brings back memories of when someone, as a joke, subscribed two mailing lists (one of which I was on) to each other.

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[gothzilla]

This is actually perfectly normal behavior and not a bug. What you did was kinda the same as holding two mirrors up to each other and created the infinity effect. Changes on the screen at home changed the screen at work which changed the screen at home which changed the screen at work...and so on. You made an infinite loop.

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[jaredcat]

umm kill it with the keyboard? ALT-F4 anyone?...

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[Tyrell Hawthorne]

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.

I must admit that one of the first things I did with VNC when I tried it many years ago was to make a VNC loop. However, the software was smart enough to sense it and not allow it. Knowing there is no software that can be smarter than the dumbness of users, I added a third machine to the mix--and voila! I had my loop.

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[lifer_red]

UltraVNC does have an option to stop this. Never tried it myself... still, maybe it's worth checking out - wouldn't want to sip a hole in space-time (and with a name like "Ultra-" perhaps subspace too...)

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[kiddygrinder]

afaik both tight and ultra vnc disallow loopback connecctions by default

Re:No one sees the fatal flaw in VNC...

[xmda]

Next time, just press Win+m (minimize all windows) and the vnc viewer should minimize to the task bar where you can close it.

Good Old Vnc

[a3217055]

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.

AW remote commander

[eokyere]

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

Windows Remote Assistance...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

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...)

GPL and Commercial VNC?

[Akai]

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 :)

Re:GPL and Commercial VNC?

[Vo0k]

The protocol specs are open source. As long as the others write their code from scratch, only conforming to the open specs, instead of just including GPL'd code, it's fine and they can license the code as they wish. Similar to proprietary ShareBear on top of GNUtella network, or MSIE supporting (poorly ;) open standard PNG. (with PNG the case is a bit different too, as it's LGPL, so they actually can link against the GNU library, they just have to provide hooks...)

Re:GPL and Commercial VNC?

[Akai]

I understand that anyone can write to the spec, the question is are they truely maintaining two code bases (one GPL one not) and if they are integrating outside contributions to their GPL product into the commercial one without permission.

Re:GPL and Commercial VNC?

[Vo0k]

The others need to keep a completely separate code base. As to RealVNC, the situation is more tricky - since they are the original authors, they can take certain freedoms...

GPL once applied, can't be removed. That's it. But you can apply it to a specific code branch and it doesn't work backwards.
Taking more extreme situation how it works.
You start an office suite, as your own "closeware", never releasing. Then around 1.0 you start selling the suite on some proprietary license - a database tool and a text editor. Some people love your database but find the editor unnecessary, so you split the project and keep selling 2.0 database and 2.0 editor. The editor sales go badly, you don't really have time to maintain it but there's a small community who still likes the editor and would like to maintain it if you decide to abandon it. So you release editor 3.0 as GPL. Now since at 1.0 the editor and the database were one and they still contain a lot of common code in the API etc, will the GPL automatically cover the code identical to GNU code parts in the database, and thus automatically cover your database app? Well, no. You decide it's a separate branch and it remains licensed as it is. The moment you "froze" editor 3.0 and GPL'd it, it's free. Database isn't. Now of course if the community improves the API in the editor to a degree where it far exceeds what you had and you'd like to backport the api to your database, you can't - the code is GPL'd and can't be included in a proprietary software. But at any time you can branch a "database viewer" from the database and GPL it while leaving the core app proprietary...

Now transferring to our case:
They maintain one source tree which is their own closeware. Then they "branch" it into three trees, differing only with, say, names and license files. "VNC-5.0-closeware", "VNC-5.0-proprietary" and "VNC-5.0-GNU". Apply proper licenses to the two (their own "closeware" allows that, after all they wrote it themselves) and release and mostly abandon the two newly-licensed branches while maintaining and working on the "closeware" trunk. Everyone can download VNC-GNU, buy VNC-proprietary and nobody from outside touches the trunk. When trunk reaches another milestone, another branch is created.
The caveat is that if anyone introduces some cool enchancement to the proprietary branch, they can buy/get it and include it in trunk, getting it both to GNU and proprietary. Now if someone modifies the GNU branch, they can only backport the feature to a GNU branch, not to the trunk, so if someone added something cool to 5.0-GNU, they can't add it to trunk - they can only freeze trunk at 6.0 creating proprietary and GNU and THEN add the feature to the GNU branch, leaving the proprietary somewhat crippled. Unless of course they rewrite the feature from scratch in the trunk, keeping just the idea - GNU license covers code, not design...

Re:GPL and Commercial VNC?

[CharlieHedlin]

Digium does something like this with Asterisk, but they require all contributors to the main branch to sign a release allowing them non GPL rights to the code. Everyone can do whatever they want with the main branch under the provisions of the GPL, but Digium has maintained additional rights to the code.

They actually require REAL handwritten signatures on a release assigning them all rights to have code included in the main branch.

Most in the community seem fine with this, as it is a great product and allowing the main sponser a revue stream seems reasonable.

It also has encryption

[bogie]

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.

Re:It also has encryption

[gad_zuki!]

Nope. What I do is intall cygwin and run the sshd. Then I can do tunnels for TightVNC. Its kinda a pain but it keeps me happy because:

Hey I got ssh access now. I might not have bothered before.

ssh is also sftp. So now I got an sftp server too!

I tunnel other things now, which I might not have done before.

Of course, this is all besides the point. Built-in encryption is the easiest way to go, but sometimes secondary effects can be just as good.

NX beats VNC easily in most situations

[JasonB]

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.

WebEx

[bwoodring]

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.

Also missing FreeNX, which talks VNC

[leonbrooks]

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.

Re:Also missing FreeNX, which talks VNC

[Huh?]

FreeNX RPMS for Fedora Core 1/2 and various RedHat distributions can be found here.

The page also includes a mini Howto.

Re:Also missing FreeNX, which talks VNC

[Mad_Rain]

Thanks for linking to the Mandrake builds, it seems like it has a lot of interesting potential - however, I'm having a terrible time finding documentation, particularly about starting it up with just a command line... any suggestions about where to look for more information (aside from google) would be appreciated.

x2vnc

[sparkmanC]

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

Nitpick Re:RDesktop != VNC

[MyHair]

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.

fastpush

[JohnnyKlunk]

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.

Re:fastpush

[bhima]

Wow, I wasn't aware of 'helpdeskvnc' this is exactly what I need...

That and /. spell checker.

Re:fastpush

[RazzleDazzle]

Looking for some really high end remote control and remote management software? This software kicks serious ass. Dameware.

It is incredibly powerful and includes all of the fancy things like file transfers, remote install/upgrades, encryption, remote task and service manager, etc. Basically you can either control the desktop or access all the settings and services as if you were at the desktop thru a client program. Now bare in mind, this software is NOT cheap but it is seriously powerful.

Two clients for a little extra security

[gothzilla]

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. :)

Different clients for different uses

[kabloom]

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

MetaVNC

[codermarc]

I prefer MetaVNC as it is a "window aware" VNC, and allows a gnome desktop, for example, to coexist with a Windows desktop.

Re:RealVNC

[tonsofpcs]

RealVNC took over AT&T Laboratories' (Cambridge, UK) VNC. The last AT&T versions (up to 3.3.7) were released under the GNU GPL. RealVNC is run by former AT&T Labs employees. This is the original VNC. They are currently developing (and starting to release) commercial VNC servers for Windows and UNIX platforms. The free version is still released with source and docs. They ask for your info when you download, but you are not required to provide any.

I use RealVNC (and occasionally AT&T's VNC on non-updated systems) for all of my remote-access-ing.

VNC?

[Goeland86]

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.

Re:VNC?

[Antique Geekmeister]

First, the Windows X servers (and yes, they're called servers, whatever is actually doing the local screen display management is the server in the X world) tend to be unfortunately large, include dozens of stupid programs you don't want, and tend to be of pretty poor quality and reliability. And the few good ones are pretty expensive. I've been running into them for years. No, they've never worked well, and they do require you to install the X server software on each Windows box you wnat to be a remote client. With VNC, the vncviewer is light, fast, easy to install, and you don't even need it since you can use a Java capable browser instead. This is amazingly helpful if you're traveling and borrowing someone else's computer to do a remote VNC access to something you absolutely need to fix. There are security implications of doing that, but better to leave the potential hole of someone key-stroke logging your connection to the VNC server than not get the job done and not get paid for saving the system.

IMHO, It Depends.

[WoTG]

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.

None of them -- security

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

None of them is acceptable.

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.

Re:None of them -- security

[dJOEK]

Can your mom send me a quote for remote admin of my windows servers ? ;-)

VNC debate

[styroteqe]

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.

On Windows? Ultr@VNC without a doubt...

[samdu]

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.

X11 is faster... as long as you are on a FAT pipe

[Bellesarius]

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.

And when did you stop beating your wife?

[0WaitState]

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.

Mod parent up

[Cato]

Good coverage of exactly how Microsoft 'helped' Citrix in the thin-client market, and probably really helped thin-client Linux...

Hardware VNC

[dJOEK]

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 ?

Re:Hardware VNC

[tweek]

As far as KVM over IP goes for Windows, you're really stuck with commerical products.

However in our scenario, we have all linux servers running on IBM xSeries boxen. Most newer motherboards also support the same feature set -> POST over serial. I can't tell you how many times being able to watch the box from POST to login over the console port has saved my ass. I rarely have to go to the datacenter except to make hardware changes/installs. Combine that with our Cyclades ACS and remote administration is a breeze.

IBM does also have something VERY cool for their xSeries boxes a called an RSA adapter. This thing actually runs when the machine is powered off and runs an embedded version of VNC. You can load virtual floppy images and boot the machine off of them for complete remote installs of your distro (if it supports net installs). We currently only have them in our x445 boxes but I really want to add them to the 335/345s we have.

vaporware

[Trepidity]

Clearly this software doesn't exist, and the image is a marketing mock-up.

Re:vaporware

[bhtooefr]

Well, sorry to ruin your joke, but it DOES exist. It's also the best damn VNC client for Windows there is, and if you don't turn on the domain authentication, you can still connect from any VNC client (best speeds with a TightVNC-compatible client, though). Also, their client DOES run under Wine - nice if you've got an UltraVNC-on-Windows server, but your client is Linux (I've been in this situation before. Interesting features:

Domain authentication - Windows accounts are honored if you enable it, so instead of a VNC-wide password, you can log in using accounts set up on your domain or computer
Chat - Not so useful, unless you're doing tech support
File transfer - I know that TridiaVNC Pro has it, but I think the only free client that has it is this. AFAICT, TridiaVNC Free is a worthless piece of crap that does nothing that TightVNC doesn't do.
Video hook driver - The main downside of VNC on Windows is that it's usually DOG SLOW, unlike RDC, which is hooked into the GDI. UltraVNC has a driver that does just that - hooks into the GDI (reboot needed, though).

As for RealVNC, why? TightVNC has a MUCH better compression method that allows for faster transfer, and is otherwise identical. I'm going to say TightVNC on non-Windows platforms, UltraVNC on Windows.

VNC session with only 1 window .

[sonamchauhan]

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?

CPU usage

[marafa]

i dont know about you guys but i found that tightVNC and radmin (maybe others but i have only worked with these two) has high CPU usage. occaisionally hitting 99% on legacy operating systems such as windows.

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

MetaVNC

[Sithgunner]

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.

Windows Remote Desktop

[sometwo]

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.

Re:Here's the advantages of each (since noone's sa

[Nermal6693]

I miss anything?

Yes.

secure connections linux - windows?

[flacco]

is there a way to set up secure connections between a linux vnc client and windows vnc server that starts automatically and is unobtrusive for the windows user?

i'd like the windows machines to start a secure server automatically, without extra windows in the taskbar (as putty requires, i think?)...

Radmin

[wldkos]

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.

TightVNC with DFMirage hook display driver

[thrill12]

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.

MetaVNC

[eatjello]

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/

xf4vnc for systems using XFree (x.org?)

[root_42]

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/

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[TiggsPanther]

On it's plus side it is possible to then access from Linux via rdp.

Against it there is a problem with printing. As mentioned it can use local printers - and can do local printers well. But if you use a network printer then it really does depend on several factors. If Remote Desktop is anything like it's "relative" Windows Terminal Services then it is choosy about which networks printing it likes. Trust me, if you're lumbered with an HP network-printer (JetDirect *sigh*) and using TS then you're SOL.

I like the chat/file transfer of UltraVNC

[cheros]

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 ...

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[Lumpy]

Ahhh! wisdom!

If you use vnc over untrusted networks without a ssh encrypted tunnel... thou art a fool.

We recently had a new photo-ad channel installed in 3 cities by a vendor and they installed VNC on all remote players that were using cable modems for connectivity. I lost my mind at them. "you CANT use VNC over the internet without an encrypted tunnel!"

they said that they knew that but cant afford the software for encrypting it... Blew my mind that they can not afford any of the free ssh servers and clients, so I made a CD of them for the installer.

They still will not use them, and if I install ssh on the playback units and server then our service contract is nullified because of a "unsupported configuration".

so I sit with 3 windows 2000 machines on cable modems and 1 server all exposed to the internet with unprotected VNC servers running on them.

I'm waiting for them to get hacked, it's only a matter of days.

If you are using Mac OS ...

[adzoox]

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.

VNC has already been cracked

[Sanctum]

I tested this crack with WinVNC 3.3.3 r9, RealVNC 3.3.7, and RealVNC 4.0. They are all vulerable.

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: ./vncrack -h target.host.com -w wordlist.txt [-opt's]
Passwd: ./vncrack -C /home/some/user/.vnc/passwd
Windows interactive mode: ./vncrack -W
enter hex key one byte per line - find it in
\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ORL\WinVNC3\Passwo rd or
\HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\ORL\WinVNC3\Pass word

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.

Re:VNC has already been cracked

[eean]

Its not an encrypted protocol, so its not really secure at all. You really should pipe it through SSH, the way FreeNX does.

Clarification is called for...

[PsychoSlashDot]

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.

On Win2k3 Server, as in Win2k, you are limited to two simultaneous RDP sessions, but you are now able to /console and remote the console 0 session itself, if you so desire. This is optional.

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 /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.

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.

An idea

[jsebrech]

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.

Remote Desktop

[Albigg]

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?

Re:Remote Desktop

[MagicBox]

I must agree with you. I use remote desktop for all administration work. I haven't had a need to physically walk to a server or desktop in a while since Windowx XP came onboard. I still use RealVNC occasionally (when no VPN is present), but other than that remote desktop beats any other applicaion by far in terms of speed and also ease of use.

Re:Remote Desktop

[bhtooefr]

IF, and only if, you've got a Windows Server product as the rdesktop server. Otherwise, it locks the session on the monitor, so that if someone's sitting at the box, they can't see a thing, and can't work with you.

FWIW, I'm tempted to install UltraVNC with the video hook driver (nearly as fast as rdesktop on a 100Mb/s network - I know, I've tried it) on my grandmother's computer. She's always asking for computer help, and UltraVNC with default settings at 1024x768x16 wanted a 123Kb/s connection. She runs at 800x600x16, IIRC, and I can drop to 8-bit color to speed it up more.

Plain ole VNC

[cmaxx]

Cos that's what x2vnc likes best.

XFree86 Integrated with Windows

[BuildMonkey]

Where can I find this XFree86 integrated with Windows?

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.

Re:XFree86 Integrated with Windows

[Spy Hunter]

Well, I don't use Gnome and I haven't had problems with Emacs, so I can't help you there. It's worked fine for me, though I haven't used it super-extensively.

Re:XFree86 Integrated with Windows

[stoborrobots]

free but not Free X11R6.5.1 server for Windows

Latest version released August 1, 2004 as freeware, but identical to previous 2002 commercial version...

old, buggy, no longer maintained, but Free, DirectX 6.1-based port of R6.5.1.

I'm half considering attempting to merge the diffs from that port into Xorg 6.8... I started the other day on a lark, told myself that if I got it to compile I'd create a sf.net project for it... Don't hold your breath though, coz I've got a billon other projects demanding my time just at the moment...

I use one called SSH

[xutopia]

and it beats all the other remote programs hands down!

VNCon

[QuiK_ChaoS]

I am suprised no one has mentioned VNCon. I use it, with RealVNC and it works excellent.

Remote Administrator

[dsvj1977]

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

Re:Microsoft.

[Matey-O]

whatever. Jusdt because someone makes a great product and has the 'misfortune' to get bought out by M$ doesn't make it any less a great product.

PocketPC client (Windows Mobile 2003)?

[Crescens]

Kind of along the same topic. I've been using a VNC server to control a media center computer. Previously I had been using Windows Remote Desktop and the PocketPC terminal services client. While that works, it didn't allow me to log on and still display the main screen to my TV. I switched to VNC and have only found one VNC Viewer program for my PocketPC. Is there anything that may be a bit better than this? VNCViewer seems to have issues with completely hiding the bar on the top with the task switcher icon so I keep needing to quit the program to go to another.

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).

TightVNC Beta supports file transfers as well.

[unikorn]

I use it for transferring files as well. The beta hasnt crashed for me in the past 3 months.

Remote Desktop

[creamandchives]

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.

Multi-Monitor Support

[LogicX]

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?

UltraVNC

[Coppit]

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. :(

VNC or something else for slow connections?

[DeDmeTe]

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.

Remote Desktop requires a login

[Seekerofknowledge]

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.

Re:Remote Desktop requires a login

[devilspgd]

If you login with the same username and password as the currently logged in user, you'll take over that session.

Re:Remote Desktop requires a login

[Seekerofknowledge]

Thanks, I'll have to try that out.

Also, I think in my original post I was confusing Terminal Services with Remote Desktop. I haven't used either one very much.

NT Domain and Active Directory based security

[krebobble]

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

How I vnc through the corporate firewall ;)

[gerald626]

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.

Please put an end to these articles!

[csoto]

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!

disconnect on screen resolution change?

[capt.mellow]

. . . 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.

UltraVNC for features and security

[waynegoode]

I asked myself this question about a year ago. I spent less than an hour researching, but I decided that UltraVNC seemed the best. It seemed to have the most features and be the most up to date. It has the best features of the others.

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.

RAdmin is the way to go

[xot]

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.

Timbuktu

[vrojr]

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).

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[man_ls]

HP's embedded network printers that I've seen work just the same as regular printers in Windows....just they're on a TCP socket instead of a physical port.

I've never had a problem with RDP and printing, but ymmv.

tridia vnc keeps spamming my email.

[Comsn]

i tried it while i was hunting for good vnc, and tridia now keeps spamming my email. currently i use tightvnc.

Jet Direct Software

[DroolArt]

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)

Score 1, Offtopic

[macdaddy]

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.

Recursiveness... Easy to fix

[LeiraHoward]

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.)

Re:locking/unlocking desktop - otherwise useless

[jollespm]

To connect when machine is locked or no one is logged in you have to run the VNC server as a service. It will then allow client connections at any time. Real VNC allows you to send the Ctrl+Alt+Del by right clicking the VNC sessions title bar. (Windows version)

QUESTION: VNC Multi-window server?

[Salamanders]

Does nayone know a flavor or pre-packaged Linux distro that can serve up many user's login sessions over VNC?

x11vnc for Solaris

[sunbane]

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...

Re:VNC and Multiple Monitors

[jollespm]

I use RealVNC 4.0 and have a 3 monitor setup. It functionally works quite well, but pegs the processor on the server (P4 2GHz W2kPro) and it gets really slow. Remotely it will keep up with network lag, but if a client is connected, control from the local end is painful.

Disabling 2 of the 3 screens makes it much more snappy.

Best = Your needs

[nurb432]

Each has its own merits.. one isnt 'best'..

Re:Windows Remote Desktop

[TiggsPanther]

Well for some reason it seems that the standard Windows RDP client doesn't really like network printers. (Yet the Citrix Metaframe product is apparently able to support them...)

One thing my research did find out it that it is very much a case of YMMV.
The other was that HP LaserJet printers don't mind being being connected to a Network and connected to a PC via a USB cable. So at least we could get it running on one of them.

a cross-platform data point

[cellocgw]

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.

XForwarding over SSH

[guanno]

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.

Promise controllers would sometimes work.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

There are lots of options,depends on what you want

[buttkick]

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

Which VNC?

[Fallen Andy]

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 )

Re:Which VNC?

[dublin]

Tried both RealVNC and TightVNC and the "original" won at least in a LAN environment.

This is NOT surprising - Konstantin Kaplinsky, the author of TightVNC, made it clear in his original announcemnt of the product that the Tight protocol was designed to speed up VNC over high latency, low-bandwidth (dialup) connections - he even went out of his way to point out that the Tight protocol is usually slower than the plain old VNC protocol when running across a fast, low latency connection like a LAN.

I don't have a link handy, but it you look at the archives of the old vnc-list@uk.research.att.com list (assuming it's still out there somewhere...), you'll find his postings pretty much as I've described...

Version that doesn't mess with the ALT/Meta key?

[cracauer]

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!

Re:Here's the advantages of each (since noone's sa

[dublin]

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.

Re:Micro$haft is playing dirty tricks again

[The MESMERIC]

Mine didn't crash Both Firefox and Opera What operating system are you running? :)

Left out a few

[nsayer]

I think the best client is Chicken of the VNC. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the scaling feature you speak of, but I don't mind it when it's in the pan-n-scan fullscreen mode.

The client built into KDE is pretty nice too.

What? The guy didn't say what platform he was talking about.

Not true

[cbreaker]

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.

Why?

[Pieroxy]

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?

Thank you!

[leonbrooks]

The more the merrier. Any other takers?

Sibling post linked a howto

[leonbrooks]

here.

not just a girl

[pne]

and also a really badly Photoshopped picture of some keys on a keyboard - the letters' perspective distortion doesn't match the keys *at all*.

In a word, most of them

[ysrd]

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.

I switched to Ultra and now I have ULTRA problems.

[jelwell]

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.

Re:I switched to Ultra and now I have ULTRA proble

[AKAImBatman]

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.

I prefer WinSSHd with RDP

[snig64]

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.