vnc versus desktop ??

[Robin Hill]

On Tue Apr 15, 2003 at 07:44:19AM +0000, mourad mourad <mourad_123@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> 
> I've just downloaded vnc into my Redahat 8.0 linux box, in my windows XP 
> box I downloaded the client vncviewer, When i make a connection thru this 
> viewer i get an xterm window only , I thought vnc's aim was to bring all my 
> desktop window as if i was working on the remote computer.. am missing 
> something  please tell me ??
> 
Not quite - VNC's aim is to provide a remote connection to a persistent
desktop.  On Windows this happens to be the same desktop as the local
user sees (since standard Windows cannot have multiple desktops).  On
UNIX/Linux based systems (with true multi-user support) this is not the
case - the vncserver starts a new desktop which the viewer then connects
to (so multiple users can have their own desktops running on the same
PC).

> Would I have do adjust my configuration to get to the desktop ???
> 
If you're trying to view the remote PCs standard desktop then you have a
couple of options:
  1: Do everything through VNC, even on the Redhat box (i.e. just
     connect via VNC to the localhost and run everything in that
     session).  This has a handicap in that the VNC X server doesn't
     support most of the XFree86 extensions so you may run into issues
     with applications (particularly video).  One workaround to this is
     the xf4vnc project (http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/) which provides
     an alternate VNC server which is based on the latest version of
     XFree86 so supports most of the extensions - you may not get the
     lastest VNC features though.
  2: You can try using xf4vnc (http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/) which
     includes a module for X which will export the standard desktop over
     RFB so you can connect to it using VNC.  I've not tried the latest
     version but I had problems with keyboards under the old version (it
     didn't recognise the remote keyboard as being any different from
     the local one, making it almost impossible to connect using a
     laptop).

Those are the only two options I know of (others may well have more
though).

HTH,
        Robin

-- 
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    ( ' }     |       Robin Hill        <robin@robinhill.me.uk> |
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