Comment by general1465 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by general1465 | Hacker News Reader

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> And to your point about portability, if you're stuck on a non-linux OS, VNC/RDP aren't pretty but they'll get the job done.

If you can make them working. Sorry you can't connect if user is logged on this computer. Whoops RDP session is active, so I will show you this black screen after typing your username and password until user disconnects (Why not kick out the user?). VNC is even bigger pain when you need to boot up server from SSH and sometimes restart it when it gets stuck.

While on Windows you can just install TightVNC and it works. No screwing with screens. On MacOS you can just tick Remote Screen Sharing, put your VNC password and it just works. Even Android can do that droidVNC-NG, But Linux is such a PITA to make VNC or RDP working.

And RDP also assumes that you are running X11 and not Wayland.

> I will show you this black screen

Right, that's why I said RDP isn't pretty if you aren't on Linux. Windows insists on creating a separate desktop for each session. IIRC it has something to do with licensing, they don't like simultaneous users using one Windows license.

> While on Windows you can just install TightVNC and it works.

If you're resorting to installing third-party apps, you can install TightVNC on Linux too, and it just works. Though I found krfb performs better on my network, ymmv.

> And RDP also assumes that you are running X11 and not Wayland.

RDP is just a protocol that describes the bytes going over the network. Why would it care about your display server? There are VNC and RDP servers for both X11 and Wayland. Just install one that's supported by your system.

Though if you're on linux, you don't have to deal with the VNC/RDP jank at all. Just use ssh -X or waypipe and it's way snappier.

I use ssh -X all the time (actually I have -X permanently enabled so it's always there - for the targets where I want to use it). However, if there's any combination of latency and heavy X traffic (which can be found in surprising places), ssh doesn't cut it. Then a VNC is necessary. The difference can be as much as ten minutes of waiting for the GUI to come up, or nearly instantly if I have a VNC running.

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