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I have a PC running Opensuse 11.0 Linux. I currently login using ssh with putty. However this is a command line login. How to do a remote xserver login from windows to run a gnome or kde session. what software should I use? I have the root password for the Linux PC and admin privileges on vista.
Rohit Banga
Posted 2010-03-12T04:23:48.973
Reputation: 1 814
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Running a VNC server on your Linux machine is probably the fastest route to success here. Here's a nice article from Redhat that details making your desktop something you can access whenever, where ever using VNC. From your Windows machine you only need a freely and readily available VNC client to connect to your Linux machine and display your login session in all it's desktop UI glory. You've got a couple of choices for clients: RealVNC and TightVNC are two that come to mind.
The only downside I can think of with VNC is it's not the most efficient protocol. So if you're on a network with a lot of lag it can make your GUI sessions unpleasant. But on a LAN it's usually just a-okay.
Edit: Here's a guide for setting up VNC straight from the OpenSuSE project. Should make it easier to just yast in the pieces you need.
Ian C.
Posted 2010-03-12T04:23:48.973
Reputation: 5 383
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If you want to use the remote desktop client that is included in Windows, there is xrdp, a compatible server which runs on your Linux box, that I have used in the past when I wasn't allowed to install anything on a Windows machine...
Neal
Posted 2010-03-12T04:23:48.973
Reputation: 8 447
someone told me not to use VNC as it can be compromised easily by hackers. Are you aware of any security issues. what are the alternatives in that case? – Rohit Banga – 2010-03-12T04:37:05.870
Are you behind a firewall? If yes: don't worry about it. If you're doing this over the public network then, yes, VNC isn't amazingly secure. You should always run it with a password. That's probably enough to make 99.999% of everyone malicious look for an easier target. You can also help reduce your VNC servers likelyhood of being found by running it on a port other than the default. That's Good Enough(tm) to stave off most baddies. – Ian C. – 2010-03-12T06:34:42.113
If you're really paranoid you can look at a virtual session tool from NoMachine called NX: http://www.nomachine.com/select-package.php?os=linux&id=1 . No nearly as easy to setup and use as VNC but it does tunnel in over ssh so it's as secure as your ssh sessions now. Alternatively you could run an XServer on Windows like the one from the XMing project, ssh in and do port forwarding. This would let you launch GUI based apps that draw their displays on your Windows machine, securely.
– Ian C. – 2010-03-12T06:39:12.660OK i will give it a try. It is on the Lan. So not going through a public network. – Rohit Banga – 2010-03-12T06:39:45.670
VNC works. but there is one problem. I have rightnow tested only on localhost. I had firefox open on the host computer. when i tried to open vnc in the client session. it told me that firefox is already running. can't we have independent sessions or will the sessions be independent when done on a remote client. – Rohit Banga – 2010-03-12T09:13:44.397
Firefox uses a directory under ~ to store semaphores. Lots of programs do actually. It's usually a headache to have two logged in sessions desktop sessions to the same machine (or at the same time on any machines if your home dir is globally accessible). You can share out your current desktop session so you can move seamlessly from working directly at the machine to working over VNC remotely but using the same session. That way you're never logged in more than once. – Ian C. – 2010-03-12T13:00:48.407