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#1 2010-12-20 06:12:12

victorhooi
Member
Registered: 2009-08-06
Posts: 109

Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Hi,

I'm trying to find a working remote-desktop solution for Arch Linux.

The first one I tried was neatx. I remember setting this up to be a fairly seamless affair in Ubuntu/Debian. However, the neatx package in Arch Linux appears to be broken:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=842046

I then decided to try x2go (http://www.x2go.org/index.php?id=1&L=5), which is apparently meant to be fairly seamless, and more actively developed.

It's not in the Arch Linux repositories, but is in AUR.

However, it depends on nxcompext (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=18024), which doesn't appear to compile cleanly on my system at least, giving me an error:

NXlib.c:4712:3: warning: dereferencing 'void *' pointer
NXlib.c:4712:3: error: request for member 'synchandler' in something not a structure or union
NXlib.c: In function 'NXFlushDisplay':
NXlib.c:682:1: warning: control reaches end of non-void function
NXlib.c: In function 'NXDisplayCongestion':
NXlib.c:656:1: warning: control reaches end of non-void function
NXlib.c: In function 'NXDisplayFlushable':
NXlib.c:638:1: warning: control reaches end of non-void function
make: *** [NXlib.o] Error 1
Aborting...

FreeNX doesn't appear to have been actively developed since 2008, and appears to be even messier than NeatX to setup. That, and it doesn't support many of the newer features in NX, that NeatX does.

My first question - has anybody managed to get either neatx, or x2go working on their Arch Linux system? And if so, how did you go about doing it?

Or alternately - are there any other open-source remote-desktop solutions that are known to work on Arch? I would have thought it's a fairly standard requirement, and that there would be a working solution in the repositories somewhere?

VNC isn't really an option, both due to poor latency/performance, as well as not supporting things like multiple sessions, session shadowing etc.

Cheers,
Victor

Last edited by victorhooi (2010-12-20 06:14:29)

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#2 2010-12-20 08:23:40

z0id
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2010-02-02
Posts: 122

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

I used to use FreeNX, and it worked, but only after I copied some files manually from the packages on Nomachine website - can't remember which. I found the tip via google, anyway.


/usr/bin/drinking

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#3 2010-12-21 07:23:43

Leviathan1
Member
Registered: 2010-11-24
Posts: 19

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

VNC isn't really an option, both due to poor latency/performance, as well as not supporting things like multiple sessions, session shadowing etc.

Cheers,
Victor

Really? As far as I know, vnc is still the 'proven technology' for remote remote desktop. Have you tried Tigervnc ? Performance is more than well enough for me.
In fact, it's designed to perform well over low bandwidth connections.
And you can start as many vnc sessions as you want, why do you think there is no multiple session support ?

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#4 2010-12-21 11:44:46

graysky
Wiki Maintainer
From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
Website

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?


CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packagesZsh and other configs

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#5 2011-01-04 23:03:45

Nielskep
Member
Registered: 2011-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Is there any remote desktop solution which is fast enough to stream movie over local LAN?

(P.S. freenx movie play was slow (like 5-10fps))

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#6 2011-01-05 00:16:42

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

ssh with X forwarding


Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#7 2011-01-05 09:26:44

Nielskep
Member
Registered: 2011-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

But I always read FreeNX (or neatx) is faster than ssh with X-forward?
So isn't trying ssh with X forwarding one step back to try to remote desktop a movie ;-)

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#8 2011-01-05 10:38:50

Wittfella
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-05-27
Posts: 462

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

I didn't find FreeNX to be any faster than Tiger/Tight VNC personally,  plus VNC is way easier to setup and get running, 'it just works'.  Anecdotal I admit but it was always a hassle getting FreeNX to work properly.

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#9 2011-01-05 11:36:46

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Nielskep wrote:

Is there any remote desktop solution which is fast enough to stream movie over local LAN?

Th proper way to stream a movie is to stream the file over and have it play on the local machine. You could simply mount a samba share or use sshfs for that, or set up something more elaborate like a media server with UPnP and all that stuff.

Otherwise I'll go with the others when they say NX is some black magic voodoo to set up, while VNC is pretty much the epitome of simplicity. Especially when you want to have a Windows client on an USB stick. Try that with NX. vncviewer on the other hand, is a single binary that you copy onto the stick and then simply run.

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#10 2011-01-05 13:47:13

Nielskep
Member
Registered: 2011-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Gusar wrote:
Nielskep wrote:

Is there any remote desktop solution which is fast enough to stream movie over local LAN?

Th proper way to stream a movie is to stream the file over and have it play on the local machine. You could simply mount a samba share or use sshfs for that, or set up something more elaborate like a media server with UPnP and all that stuff.

Otherwise I'll go with the others when they say NX is some black magic voodoo to set up, while VNC is pretty much the epitome of simplicity. Especially when you want to have a Windows client on an USB stick. Try that with NX. vncviewer on the other hand, is a single binary that you copy onto the stick and then simply run.

I know the proper way, using mediatomb I am already playing movies on my ps3.
But sometimes I am abroad only carrying my company windows-only laptop without administrator.
As I don't want to install a lot of non-company software on that laptop (wherever that's possible) I wanted to execute almost everything on my desktop at home and use the laptop as a kind of "end-node".. Yesterday I was testing the possibility of watching a movie (only using local wireless lan) using freenx and got a little disappointed by the speed.

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#11 2011-01-05 14:07:16

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Nielskep wrote:
Gusar wrote:
Nielskep wrote:

Is there any remote desktop solution which is fast enough to stream movie over local LAN?

Th proper way to stream a movie is to stream the file over and have it play on the local machine. You could simply mount a samba share or use sshfs for that, or set up something more elaborate like a media server with UPnP and all that stuff.

Otherwise I'll go with the others when they say NX is some black magic voodoo to set up, while VNC is pretty much the epitome of simplicity. Especially when you want to have a Windows client on an USB stick. Try that with NX. vncviewer on the other hand, is a single binary that you copy onto the stick and then simply run.

I know the proper way, using mediatomb I am already playing movies on my ps3.
But sometimes I am abroad only carrying my company windows-only laptop without administrator.
As I don't want to install a lot of non-company software on that laptop (wherever that's possible) I wanted to execute almost everything on my desktop at home and use the laptop as a kind of "end-node".. Yesterday I was testing the possibility of watching a movie (only using local wireless lan) using freenx and got a little disappointed by the speed.

your best solution is to install and boot from a usb stick.

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#12 2011-01-05 14:29:39

Nielskep
Member
Registered: 2011-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

eldragon wrote:
Nielskep wrote:
Gusar wrote:

Th proper way to stream a movie is to stream the file over and have it play on the local machine. You could simply mount a samba share or use sshfs for that, or set up something more elaborate like a media server with UPnP and all that stuff.

Otherwise I'll go with the others when they say NX is some black magic voodoo to set up, while VNC is pretty much the epitome of simplicity. Especially when you want to have a Windows client on an USB stick. Try that with NX. vncviewer on the other hand, is a single binary that you copy onto the stick and then simply run.

I know the proper way, using mediatomb I am already playing movies on my ps3.
But sometimes I am abroad only carrying my company windows-only laptop without administrator.
As I don't want to install a lot of non-company software on that laptop (wherever that's possible) I wanted to execute almost everything on my desktop at home and use the laptop as a kind of "end-node".. Yesterday I was testing the possibility of watching a movie (only using local wireless lan) using freenx and got a little disappointed by the speed.

your best solution is to install and boot from a usb stick.

But then I would need to be able to change bootorder in bios ..

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#13 2011-01-05 14:57:22

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

Nielskep wrote:

But then I would need to be able to change bootorder in bios ..

Most machines nowadays have a "boot menu" option. With a press of a button you get into the menu where you select the stick, otherwise the machine boots as usual.

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#14 2011-01-10 13:16:51

ice9
Member
Registered: 2010-04-16
Posts: 14

Re: Remote Desktop solution for Arch?

I just installed x2goserver-one 3.0.1_5-2 on my system, including nxcompext 3.4.0_1-2, and it is working fairly well for me. I have pulse-audio sounded tunneled over ssh, and it can even kindof play a small youtube video over my wireless network. I did not think it was too difficult to set up.

What version of nxcompext were you installing?

The only problem I am having (so far) with x2go is relatively minor, and I expect it is solvable. Somehow xorg and/or gnome is not reading the locale properly when I start a session from the windows x2go client, and locale is defaulting to POSIX/C, even though I have it set in rc.conf to en_US.UTF-8, and /etc/profile.d/locale.sh has "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8". I can set it with LANG in my .bashrc, but that does not propagate it to the gnome environment, so, for example, gnome-terminal defaults to "ANSIX3.4-1968" character encoding. x2go seems to start gnome-session with x2goagent, and I am not sure where it looks for the locale.

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