Well, getting around firewalls can be difficult since most larger companies use a good firewall with stateful packet inspection. When I worked at motorola almost every protocol was blocked except for http, https, ftp, and a few others. Logmein worked well since their service uses https. VNC can be somewhat insecure since it's not encrypted unless used through ssh.<br>
<br>If you don't have to worry about strict firewalls I'd give X11VNC a shot. I have my X11VNC set up to launch when I initiate an ssh session (using Putty as a client). I set up a tunnel by selecting the local option, picking a port like 5959 to bind to locally. You can also set up a dynamic tunnel that acts as a SOCKS 5 proxy. There's a lot of good tutorials out there for almost any flavor of unix or linux.<br>
<br>-Dan<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Eric Ellington <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:e.ellington@gmail.com">e.ellington@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I would recommend VNC. VNC was the first remote desktop program I used<br>
on windows, it was easy to set up and worked great. However, I used<br>
VNC when it was still a free product from ATT. Googling VNC shows up<br>
many variants of VNC, but I am not familiar with all of the variants<br>
available today. Hopefully someone else can recommend one.<br>
<br>
When you start to know more about Linux remotely accessing machines<br>
using SSH is great, and you can start remote X sessions to use a<br>
remote desktop. I think VNC is a great place to start though, at least<br>
it was for me.<br>
<br>
Eric<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:46 AM, John Bulger <<a href="mailto:johnbulger@uicalumni.org">johnbulger@uicalumni.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> First off, I am not a programmer or system administrator, just a user. I do<br>
> have an interest in migrating from Windows to one of the free UNIX style<br>
> operating systems. Thus, the reason that I came across and subscribed to the<br>
> mailing list.<br>
><br>
> That said, I was looking into the possibility of using something like VNC to<br>
> operate a desktop machine remotely on a lightweight, low cost laptop. My<br>
> hope is that this way I can purchase the best hardware most cost effectively<br>
> and still enjoy mobility. Anyway, I came across the site below:<br>
><br>
> <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/60688/What-are-the-limitations-of-current-remote-desktop-applications" target="_blank">http://ask.metafilter.com/60688/What-are-the-limitations-of-current-remote-desktop-applications</a><br>
><br>
> I would like to invite anyone interested to provide their own comments.<br>
> Those on the site are more than a couple of years old and assume that<br>
> Windows XP is being used. I personally would prefer recommendations based on<br>
> UNIX, if that makes any difference. Some on the site would suggest using<br>
> Microsoft's Remote Desktop. I may decide to maintain a copy of Windows on a<br>
> partition of my machine, in which case Remote Desktop may be considered an<br>
> option I suppose and comments on that are also welcome.<br>
><br>
> LogMeIn and UltraVNC appear to be the other favorites. Hamachi, an add-on to<br>
> LogMeIn was also recommended for avoiding any issues with firewalls though<br>
> someone also suggests that they may just as easily be avoided by using a<br>
> non-standard port for RDP and VNC clients. Again, anyone care to agree or<br>
> disagree?<br>
><br>
> Finally, if anyone wishes to recommend a laptop suitable for this purpose,<br>
> please let me know.<br>
><br>
> Thanks.<br>
><br>
> John<br>
</div></div>> _______________________________________________<br>
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><br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Eric Ellington<br>
<a href="mailto:e.ellington@gmail.com">e.ellington@gmail.com</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
UFO Chicago -- Users of Free Operating Systems<br>
Free Software Rules -- Proprietary Drools!<br>
<a href="http://ufo.chicago.il.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ufo" target="_blank">http://ufo.chicago.il.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ufo</a><br>
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