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-=> Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Dan Clough <=-

 GK> Hello Dan!

 GK> 07 Jun 25 08:50, Dan Clough wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

 GK>> Do you want persistent logins? Do you want access to the physical X
 GK>> display (:0), virtual ones, or both? Looking for the client or the
 GK>> server end (or both)?

 DC> Don't even know enough about it to answer the first two questions...

 GK> There is a difference if you want to share your physical display, i.e.,
 GK> the session that is displayed on the monitor connected to the server,
 GK> or if you want a "virtual" session that is running on the server with
 GK> no monitor hardware attached. Some software can do one, some the other,
 GK> some both.

 GK> Which software you want depends on what you want to achieve: using the
 GK> physical display remotely is more or less required if you want to give
 GK> users in front of the machine remote help, i.e., see their screens,
 GK> move their mouse, type for them. OTOH, running virtual session enables
 GK> you to hook up several remote users to a server, everyone running their
 GK> own session. This way, you could, for example, use a more powerful
 GK> server to run several (virtual) desktop environment sessions, each of
 GK> these being displayed by a less powerful thin client.

Excellent, sounds like I would just need a virtual session.

 GK> Having "persistent" logins means that your virtual session (with all
 GK> software running) is not automatically terminated when your client
 GK> disconnects. Instead, it is waiting on the server until your client
 GK> reconnects (which could be days later). If you are familiar with tools
 GK> like "screen" or "tmux" on the commandline (or in xterm): persistent
 GK> virtual X sessions are pretty much the same concept, just using X
 GK> sessions (including your full desktop if you like) instead of a
 GK> textmode terminal.

Perfect - I'm very familiar with screen/tmux and use them all the time, 
so the "detach" functionality is known.  Not something I'd need in this 
use-case though.

 GK>> If VNC and RDP above are not a requirement (but merely examples): I
 GK>> am using x2go for a couple of years now (and try to avoid the other
 GK>> two, if possible).

 DC> I'm assuming you avoid VNC/RDP for security reasons...

 GK> Well, depends on the actual setup and software you use, I guess. I
 GK> probably would not recommend the original VNC ("realvnc") to anyone
 GK> these days. TightVNC or TigerVNC usually perform better, provide more
 GK> features and better security. RDP, on the other hand, was invented by
 GK> MS. At least for me, especially the server part always felt tedious to
 GK> set up and clumsy to operate. This is probably caused by its "alien"
 GK> (from *ix-perspective) origin. Admittedly, I have not used it for quite
 GK> some time, maybe it improved meanwhile. I am using it on *ix systems as
 GK> a client (remmina being my default client there) when I have to talk to
 GK> MS servers. However, I would avoid the server on *ix systems if I have
 GK> other choices.

OK, that all makes sense and I'm thinking I'll just be using VNC then, 
as there is no MS/Windows around here.  ;-)

 DC>  I've added x2go to my list of candidates, and it looks pretty good.

 GK> I have used x2go in various scenarios over the last years, usually
 GK> running the server on Linux machines to be able to operate their
 GK> software from Windows, MacOS, *BSD oder other Linux boxes. It is
 GK> reasonably fast, tunnels over ssh by default, supports using SSH key
 GK> authentication and SSH jump hosts (so you do not have to mess with
 GK> firewall rules and port forwarding if you already have an ssh port
 GK> open), offers session management, persistance, access to the physical X
 GK> display. On top of that, it is OpenSource and easy to set up, so for me
 GK> there is not much more to ask for. You have to take care a bit when
 GK> using "fancy" desktop environments that come with compositors,
 GK> transparency and stuff like that. My default desktop is xfce, x2go
 GK> usually works fine with it.

This is great info, and should be fairly straight forward by the sound 
of it.  I also use XFCE and nothing fancy.  I'm now side-tracked on 
another project and may not get to this again for a few days, but will 
try to remember to come back and update.

 GK> Regards,
 GK> Gerrit

Thank you for your VERY informative post - I found it extremely helpful 
indeed.  Appreciate you taking the time to explain all of that.

Cheers,
Dan



... Gone crazy, be back later, please leave message.
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