Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Open Source Guacamole Puts VNC On the Web

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the there's-an-app-for-that dept.

tbitiss writes "A new open source project dubbed Guacamole allows users to access a desktop remotely through a web browser, potentially streamlining the requirements for client support and administration. Guacamole is an HTML5 and JavaScript (Ajax) VNC viewer that makes use of a VNC-to-XML proxy server written in Java. According to its developers, Guacamole is almost as responsive as native VNC and should work in any browser supporting the HTML5 canvas tag. Supporting 10 Linux desktops in 10 browser tabs? I like the sound of that."

3 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. NX by blkwolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see something like this using the NX protocol as the response time is much faster than VNC.

  2. What's old is new by rwa2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Heh, all the way back since the late 90's I've been logging in to my VNC sessions via the built-in java client (just go to http://vnchost:5801/ instead of vnchost:1 ). I guess that means that HTML5 + JIT compiled Javascript is the new Java?

    If you like Guacamole, you'll probably also like AJAXterm, which can give you a webpage-based shell. It works well with GNU screen. It's nice for workplaces that block SSH but have an HTTPS proxy. Can't find a definitive webpage for it, but it's not too hard to set up from the debian repository. But it does seem to work a bit better than Mindterm (the Java ssh client from the 90's).

    For mobile phone use, I've been fairly content with the java MIDPSSH. Unless your smartphone has a native ssh client, of course.

  3. Re:Back ... TO THE FUTURE! by hax0r_this · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How is that the worst of both worlds, or a hack? This uses Java and Javascript both in the environments in which they work best. And I'm not even sure why you would call this a hack. Do you have a problem with working with XML in a Java server? Java is far from my language of choice, but thats hardly a hack. Or is it the drawing in an HTML5 canvas that you consider a hack? Because thats exactly what its for.