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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."

17 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. bucng of layers by sourcerror · · Score: 3, Funny

    Please, can't we have some more abstraction layers? My machine is just so fast I can't handle it. (Yeah, I know, we use the extra performance to services which were unfeasible earlier blah, blah...)

    1. Re:bucng of layers by c++0xFF · · Score: 4, Funny

      Please, can't we have some more abstraction layers?

      Maybe we should make a new project called "BeanDip" ... it has 7 layers, including Guacamole.

    2. Re:bucng of layers by physburn · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes please, lets turn all the screen output to XML, before turning it back to screen output, because XML, is so cool. That would be so much faster than streaming X11 (not).

  2. Re:Slashvertisement? by dotancohen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ack! TFA (yeah, I went for it) splashes some ad that didn't make it past my hosts file. You might want this link instead, which goes to the sourceforge page and not the techworld blog:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/guacamole/

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  3. Great.... by macintard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Almost" as responsive as VNC? So it sucks even more?

    1. Re:Great.... by NormalVisual · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not a matter of it being open source. VNC is sending huge blocks of pixel data anytime anything changes on the source display, whereas RDP sends much more high-level commands which the client can then use to reconstruct the desktop locally instead of having to retrieve each and every pixel across the wire. XDMCP is another protocol that's somewhat comparable to RDP, and takes advantage of the fact that the X window system was designed to work over a network and thus sends X commands instead of big blocks of pixels. XDMCP offers performance light-years better from the user's perspective than VNC in my experience, and I find it to be almost indistinguishable from sitting at the workstation itself when used over a 100 megabit network. NX is similar to XDMCP in concept, but offers a number of improvements and generally performs better.

      Also, RDP is a Windows-specific, proprietary protocol, so while there are Unix RDP clients that can connect to a Windows server, the fundamental differences in the way X and Windows generate their displays make it difficult to create a good RDP server for non-Windows systems. VNC's performance is usually pretty awful, but because it's just moving blocks of pixels around it's fairly easy to create a VNC server for any operating system.

      --
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  4. Back ... TO THE FUTURE! by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Plain old vncserver had this capability since at least 1998. I remember using it once at a customer site and their staff gathered around gawking. "He's got xterms in Netscape!"

    1. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. Gee, what are the chances... by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Funny

    that Guacamole would be announced on Cinco de Mayo?

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  7. 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.

    1. Re:What's old is new by al.caughey · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've got 10 digits but I'm only using two of them to type this message

  8. Layers? by twoallbeefpatties · · Score: 4, Funny

    Would you prefer a seven-layer Guacamole dipswitch?

    I'm sorry, but I must not be the only one who's facepalming over a post about Guacamole being posted on Cinco de Mayo.

    --
    Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
  9. Name? by DaFallus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do so many open source projects have the dumbest names? Whats next? Ketchup? Towel? Come on guys, put the bowl down for five minutes and come up with a name that isn't related to the munchies in front of you or the stains on your shirt.

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    1. Re:Name? by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dude, your username is DaFallus.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    2. Re:Name? by TheQuantumShift · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Would you prefer "Remote Access Desktop Professional Ultimate - Browser Edition 9 (SP4)"

      Of course there is a happy medium, descriptive plays on words and acronyms (Rhythmbox, Gnumeric, Gedit, etc.) But why not have totally off the wall names like Pidgin, Gimp, Bluefish, etc. It makes things distinctive. Open source is about having fun (usually) so why box it in?

      --

      Shift happens. Fire it up.
  10. Re:Hmmm... by fang0654 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My company uses FormFlow Filler extensively, for filling out government forms. It was bought by Adobe and killed, with the end of life in 2004. It barely runs on XP, let alone anything later. If it was open sourced, I'm sure even with my meager coding skills I could at least keep it functional, since it is still heavily used. Point being, proprietary software being shelved sucks much more than open source software being shelved.