So long VNC. I will miss you. NOT.

Being a lazy embedded software engineer has several advantages, like being able to control every gadget in your house from your couch. Needless to say, you also remotely log in to the several boxes spread around the house.

However, if you happen to be using a windows machine (e.g. a laptop, you are on your couch of course... and only because your smartphone probably does not have a capable enough client just yet) to log in to a unix box and desire to partake in the advantages a GUI offers (all you ssh console people, the GUI is a major advancement, so get with the times already!), then you have to contend with the beast known as VNC.

if you are on a Ubuntu machine (yes, no self-respecting engineer has only a windows machine.. it will, at the very least, dual-boot in to Linux), then ubuntu's Remote Desktop works splendidly. However, if you are ssh-ing over the "nekked inter-webs" then VNC is your only option. and that blows.

Or so I used to think, before running into FreeNX. Google, thou truly art a friend! FreeNX blows VNC completely out of the water. No more need to juggle between Hextile, CoRRE, Tight and other sub-par encodings. No more jiggling of the colormaps, image quality and compression levels only to have the entire processor reduced to competing with molasses, and failing.

also ALT +TAB works! Though it does require one keystroke to enable: "CTRL + ALT + K"
Thanks Mark!

Adios VNC-viewer / REAL VNC. you suck. Hello, FreeNX!

vnc viewer on ubuntu 8.10 core dumps

Firstly, getting the vnc viewer going was a whole bunch of pain (especially having it log in as non-root). But once I actually did get it going, I saw the following core-dump.

TXScrollbar.cxx:47: void TXScrollbar::set(int, int, int, bool): Assertion `limit_ > 0 && len_ >= 0 && len_ <= limit_' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

I get that anytime I try resizing or maximizing the window. Not expected behaviour. Since I don't have the time right now, I'm simply going to live with not resizing the window.

There are other issues with VNC that I haven't been able to sort out yet:

1. running VNC automatically on startup (or rather having xinetd configured so that Xvnc would be launched each time a user tries to connect.
2. to have the vnc session match the current users desktop session on the server
3. running VNC as someone other than root
4. running vnc over ssh and xdm so that the same login screen maybe used instead of special VNC protocol

setup:
client machine: ubuntu 7.10 connected via 802.11g wireless
host machine (server): ubuntu 8.10 connected via ethernet eth0 / bridge to wireless network