I have a few family members that I help support. For instance, I installed Linux Mint on my grandmother’s PC. She doesn’t know any different and my young cousin doesn’t understand it so he finally stopped giving it viruses. I used to use TeamViewer to take over her PC when she needed support but I got my account banned because they believed I was using it commercially. Oh well!
I have Tailscale installed on the computers. This gives me SSH access. What would you suggest? RDP? Something else?
VNC over SSH and you should be set.
You can forward the VNC port with a local port forward e.g
ssh -L $yourPort:localhost:$vncPort $grandmasMachine. Then open Remmina (or KRDC, or some other VNC client).I do hope your grandma has good upload speeds though.
Bless you for spreading the word of the penguin and being the support of your family. Props to you.
Thanks for the info and link.
I don’t need any props. I’m not spreading any word. It’s for selfish reasons. My grandparents only use the web browser, so they don’t know/care what an OS is. The reason I did it in the first place (they’ve been running Linux Mint for almost 10 years now) was my cousin kept trying to install Minecraft Mods and giving them viruses. XD
I believe that Linux Mint supports RDP, built in. You just enable it in the System Settings. Is that not workable?
In my experience, RDP locks the screen for anyone at the physical machine. It sounds like OP is wanting a simultaneous screen sharing.
That’s odd. It does not lock the local user out on Ubuntu, and allows simultaneous use.
Sounds like a good option then!
I think that screen lock is really only the case in Windows. Most linux vnc and rdp servers either run their own completely separate X session or share the console session.
True enough for VNC but we’re specifically talking about RDP, which is supported by Linux Mint.
That’s on me for typing vnc when I meant rdp, but nevertheless it’s true for both.
I see. GP said the same. Thanks for sharing!
I hadn’t tried it yet. I was just asking to get a census of what’s popular before I dug in too deep.
Gotcha. As usual with Linux, there are lots of ways to crack the nut. I would be inclined to go with the built-in option, in this case. Less likely to break.
Check out rustdesk, would that suit?
I’ll look more into it. Multiple have suggested it now
The thing about rustdesk is I don’t see how I could run it unless I am at the computer. Ideally, I’d like to be able to take control without having to walk through like, "look for an app called “rust desk”. Is there a way to open a desktop application through SSH so that it opens on their open desktop?
I’ve not run it on that platform, I would imagine they have similar capabilities in the Linux version.
It runs in portable mode by default, as you suggest this means it needs to be run each time.
So for unattended windows machine I installed it as a service and activated a permanent password for it. Problem solved!
Alternatively, you could set rustdesk to run on startup/login, so neither you nor the user needs to manually start it.
I think VNC protocol over your tailscale tailnet would work well. It shares the screen without locking out the in-person user.
You could also try Steam remote play, it shares the desktop like what you’re asking, but would require a bit if setup (custom “game” added which would expose the entire desktop for e.g.), and wouldn’t be useful without someone relaunching it after a reboot, so wouldn’t be very useful for remote management without grandma available at the machine.
I would stay away from X11 over SSH because X11is deprecated in favor of Wayland and will stop working as you upgrade the OS (if it even works now).
RustDesk looks promising but it sounds like it may lock the screen for the in-person user, but I’ve never used it so can’t say for sure.
Insightful thanks!
Perhaps rustdesk. It works as a server /client model, and you can self host the server. Works quite well.
Do you run it personally? How lightweight is the server?
I do, and I’ve used it for a customer.
Server is a VPS running several other services and it doesn’t load them much at all. I think the server provides the handshake, and the rest is done on the two clients.
Can you take over the remote without them having to supply a code?
I believe you can set it up to auto accept. I’m pretty sure I did that as it was my intention to use it to bring my desktop to my android tablet (which also works well btw).
Ping me tomorrow and I’ll double check for you.
That sounds pretty good. Let me know 🙂
Yes. You can set a permanent password. So long as the machine is on, rustdesk is running, and you have the password, you’ll get in.
If you really want a GUI, TightVNC over an ssh tunnel.
ssh is what I would use. You can setup X forwarding if your not that comfortable in the terminal.
Well, I want to be able to see the screen so that I can talk my grandma through stuff. I have fixed things through SSH and run updates that way too.
X forwarding should let you use GUI apps from the remote computer. Its not quite a full remote desktop experience though. You can see how to set up and use x forwarding on YouTube.
I’ve used X11 over SSH before and it works great for some use cases, however it does not work with Wayland, so if their system supports it now, there’s no guarantee it will work after a major system update.
I was curious about that as I haven’t tried Wayland yet and its been a while since I’ve had any reason for an x session via ssh. Glad someone with first hand knowledge could chime in for OP and others as well as myself.
I have heard they are either working on a similar thing for Wayland or already solved it.
This looks promising, but I have not used it before.
waypipe is a proxy for Wayland[0] clients. It forwards Wayland messages and serializes changes to shared memory buffers over a single socket. This makes application forwarding similar to ssh -X [1] feasible.
[0] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/ [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/OpenSSH#X11_forwarding
How quickly things progress. I’m stuck using X due to nvidia. All will get sorted in time. Thanks for the info!
Yep that’s why I use KDE. It has nVidia support for Wayland.
Great, I’ll check it out!
X forwarding still won’t show Grandma’s point of view to work through the problem in front of her. It’s not a remote desktop experience at all.
Sorry it doesn’t work for you. There are other options in this thread to try. Best of luck.
I use meshcentral to manage a few (like 6) computers and do remote assistance. Best solution for your usecase imo.
I looked at the documentation for that. It looks like exactly what I want. I’m between that and Rust Desk…
I also had my TeamViewer account flagged as commercial. I just appealed and they reinstated with no issues. You could try that.
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