Skip to main content

Remote Connection: Free NX vs. VNC

Apparently, there's some debate in the Linux world about remote connections. I've been using VNC for 8 years or so now. It's reliable, but definitely slow.

I've found that NoMachine's NX Server (free edition) suits my needs best. It works even better than Windows' Remote Desktop, and of course much better than VNC (which really stinks).

In my case, it opens a new session, when I connect to the server, but I think it can be configured to connect to an existing session as well.

You might want to give it a try: http://www.nomachine.com/products.php
I'll give it a try and get back to you all...

UPDATE: I've installed the server on both my laptop and my desktop Ubuntu machines following the instructions found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX. The results are astounding! While not identical in terms of functionality to VNC, I personally prefer the results. It's actually closer to an RDP session. I haven't tested the client to the fullest extent, but my initial impressions were that it's a WHOLE lot faster (near real-time on a LAN setup), and it doesn't interrupt any work being done on the machine by someone else (BIG bonus over VNC). That said, it wouldn't work as a training utility because if someone else were watching they wouldn't notice that someone else had connected.

All in all, I love it. Will use it going forward. The ubuntu.com post above has all the right install info needed to get going and I recommend the nomachine client over the open source ones (for now). The QTNX client in particular was pretty buggy for me...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Cursors on Win7/2008 R2 Using rdesktop for Ubuntu 10.04

I recently setup a Win 2008 R2 VM and proceeded to remote connect to it from Ubuntu 10.04. Everything worked perfectly except the mouse cursors were black (and some were corrupt). Solution? Use a newer version of rdesktop that doesn't ship with Ubuntu. There is a handy PPA that can be added using the following command: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ricolai/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install rdesktop [UPDATE] It appears ricolai may have removed the package from his PPA. To remedy the situation, I've uploaded the working binaries for x64. Sorry, I don't have the x86 any longer. More information on the bug can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rdesktop/+bug/385974?comments=all
14 comments
Read more

Getting the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 to work in Ubuntu 10.04

Really just posting this for my own reference later, but here's the link and the details: Enter this into your Terminal it is the code for the firmware and to install it Code: wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/22xxdrv_27086.zip wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/extract.sh Code: sh extract.sh;sudo cp *fw /lib/firmware you need to install mercurial and build essential for the next steps Code: sudo apt-get install mercurial libncurses5-dev then we need the driver using this command to fetch Code: hg clone http://kernellabs.com/hg/saa7164-stable/ now change to the directory Code: cd saa7164-stable then run make Code: make CONFIG_DVB_FIREDTV:=n that will take some time, go grab a drink and wait it out, when it completes run this command Code: sudo make install wait for that to complete and reboot from the command line Code: sudo reboot Note that an application like TVtime will not
3 comments
Read more

Mounting VMware VMDK Disks in Ubuntu (Linux)

Took me a while to find the info on this, but it's fairly simple once you piece together all the information out there. First off, I'm not converting this to VirtualBox. I'm simply accessing the HD as though it were mounted on my local file system (Ubuntu). The VMDK image is for a WinXP virtual machine. First off, verify you have vmware-mount on your system. Drop to terminal, type "vmware-mount". You should get info regarding usage. If not, you need to install VMware Server or VMware Workstation (it's bundled with them). When prompted during the install, say 'Yes' to installing the additional tools packages. Not sure which one it's in, but it's there. Sorry, perhaps someone else can clarify this point. Next, navigate to the location of your VMDK and type "vmware-mount -p .vmdk". This will show you a list of mount points within the file (first column). Create /mnt/ using "mkdir /mnt/ " Next, type "sudo vmware-m
Post a Comment
Read more