Remote Desktop in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot
November 15, 2011 9 Comments
I have always used VNC to remotely connect to a Linux desktop. On Windows it’s been RDP. I came across a much better way than VNC to connect to my Kubuntu desktop: x2go. The application is absolutely wonderful and dead easy to install on Kubuntu. But its documentation is a confusing mess. Fortunately, we don’t really need to use the documentation that much.
There are two components to x2go: client and server. Go to the download page to get a client for Windows. To setup the server on Ubuntu you will need to do the following (source: X2go packages for Ubuntu GNU/Linux):
Step 1: Add a PPA respository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:x2go/stable
Step 2: Update your package database
sudo aptitude update
Step 3: Install x2go server
sudo aptitude install x2goserver
Step 4: (Optional) Install x2go client in case you are using a Linux desktop
sudo aptitude install x2goclient
That’s basically all the configuration you need to do.
On your Windows/Linux desktop/workstation, just launch the x2go client and connect to your Ubuntu desktop using the connection profile information it asks for. Just make sure that you have SSH server enabled on your Ubuntu desktop and the firewall is not blocking its port.
Now don’t think that only Ubuntu can use x2go. All Linux distributions are able to run it but it’s just easier to install in Ubuntu because of the PPA.
I’ll also add that if you want to VNC or RDP to a Windows machine, you can use Vinagre. Just do a sudo aptitude install vinagre and you get an excellent remote desktop client.
Nice article – I’ve been looking for a way to remote in to my linux box from my Windows laptop – this should be a big help.
Thanks.
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Done in under 5 minutes, very easy.
Thanks,
I’ve had less luck with this tool. I ran into a problem where the default SSH’s key type isn’t supported by x2go (ecdsa). Found the fix online, but after actually connecting I got a desktop background, after a noticeable wait, that never showed any icons on it. So I couldn’t use the remote machine, and it is very remote so I can’t try to fix it outside of the command line. Guess I’ll try VNC next. But thanks for offering a new solution for me to try out.
wowwwww!!!! amazing!!!! it WORKS!!!!, finally something simple that works!!!! thanks!!!! ;-)
Works great .. thanx
how do you actually run the server software?
All you need is sshd running on the server. If you can ssh to the server. Then x2goclient will be able to ssh to the server and start a remote display.