Using X11vnc instead of vino, tightvncserver or vnc4server

I've been having a lot of trouble lately, using vino and vnc with my Ubuntu Linux PC. The bottom line is I need to use a remote desktop application to manage my Ubuntu PC from my Windows desktop. The first thing I tried was the Remote Desktop feature included in Ubuntu. This feature uses a package called vino, and the problem with vino is that I can't see the Ubuntu cursor correctly and the connection is a bit jerky.

Then I decided to install tightvncserver, but the keyboard was a mess and some icons and colors didn't display correctly on the remote desktop. After that I tried vnc4server, but got the same results. Then I stumbled upon No Machine NX (http://www.nomachine.com/) and decided to install it. To my surpirse it worked well the first time, but then Ubuntu updated some packages and NX started to behave exactly like tightvncserver and vnc4server!!

But today, after a week of frustration, I finally found something that works, at least for the time being! This fabulous package is called Xvnc, and you can download it from Ubuntu's repository. Just install it, open a terminal window and type x11vnc. Then you can connect from another PC using any vnc client like vncviewer:

The screenshot above shows a session on my Ubuntu PC using vncviewer from TighVNC on my Windows XP desktop. There are some settings to take care of, like adding a password to my X11vnc configuration, but right now I just wanted to let you know that this is the best vnc solution I've seen so far. I'll keep posting about all the new findings on vnc servers...

Posted via email from alromero's posterous