[Leaplist] Remote Desktop Software advice?

[Mark W. Alexander]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 10:40:27PM -0400, Chris wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I've got a customer interested in trying Linux. Up until now,
> they've been a Windows shop. I've set up VNC on all their
> desktops, and if they get in a bind, it's easy for me to attach
> to their Windows desktop session and interact with them.
> 
> But it seems that VNC under Linux wants to create its own
> session, which is not the same desktop that they will be seeing.
> The goal is to be able to attach to their current desktop session -
> not start a new one that they can't see.

You need a special VNC server like x11vnc (http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/)
that publishes the running X display. X11vnc is not particularly secure. KDE
and (I suspect) GNOME have more advanced desktop sharing tools like krfb
(http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdenetwork/krfb/index.html). The advantage to
the more robust sharing tools is that they allow the desktop user to manage the
shared access with things like invitations and time limited passwords. The
minimal VNC server has fairly limited access control including using a single
password which would make all your users desktops pretty easy to subvert if the
password ever escaped your control.

mwa
-- 
Mark W. Alexander
slash at dotnetslash.net

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