ChadDavis wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > > And then people found that starting a server was inconvenient. > > Wouldn't it be better to export the current desktop? Instead of > > exporting a new, unique and different desktop? It is possible. > > Clarification. Are you saying that some vnc servers serve up a remote > login to a new session, while others simply share an existing gnome > session?
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. When you start a vnc server session with vnc4server or tightvncserver or other then it starts a new X session. This is a completely new and separate X session on a new and different display (such as :1). Many people have it start a duplicate of their standard X session from :0 but onto the next X display :1. Meaning that if they are running GNOME on :0 then they are running GNOME on :1 too. But it is a separate instance on a separate X display. Many people find it confusing to have an identical desktop windows in a vnc client to their current desktop. It is mentally easier to use a simpler window manager for the vnc one. By default it will set up using "twm" which is a very simple and light weight point and shoot window manager. Which is usually plenty enough since you are already running another window manager on top. The choice of vnc X session window manager is configurable. I like twm for vnc but I know others who use GNOME on one and KDE on the other just so that they look enough different that they can tell them apart easily. The use for a standalone vnc session is often because people are running a non-Unix/GNU non-X window system such as MS-Windows on their desktop. They want to run Unix/GNU graphical tools such as a CAD/EDA program or some such on a server machine. Therefore they log into the server machine with ssh and start up a vnc X server session there. Then connect to it using their desktop (MS-Windows) VNC client. In that very common situation there is no existing desktop session running until they start one. There may be a dozen or more people on each server and each will have a different :NUM display to themselves. Each of them will connect to a different VNC session on the server. This is quite typical of schools and corporate industry. It is rather of a low performance PITA solution but I see people do it every day. The use for bare desktop vnc is the GoToMyPC or LogMeIn model. You own your own desktop. You want to connect to your desktop from elsewhere. In that case you don't want to start up a new :42 X session. In that case you want to connect to the existing :0 session. That is where the GNOME desktop options for "desktop sharing" come into use. Configure GNOME to share the current desktop and you can use vnc to connect to the :0 without needing to start up an additional X session. It will load the x11vnc module into the running X session and expose the root display :0 to the world so that others (perhaps you) can connect to it, see it, and drive it. Bob
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