I have two boxes. One is a windows xp desktop, the other is a fedora core 2 server. I have installed vnc on both. I CAN connect both ways. Meaning I can connect to the fedora box from the windows box and visa versa. The issue I am having is that when I connect to the fedora box from the windows box I get a grey desktop with a terminal (like in a regular ssh session ie. putty) and a option box that allows me to trade clipboards between the boxes.

Is this normal? Or is there a way to connect to my fedora box and get my Gnome GUI to come up? I have found hints to a xinitrc file but I am not familar with linux enough to know what to do with it. I have read the man files on it but I don't know how to relate that to the vnc server.

Any help would be great appreciated. I want to be able to connect to it because I want to learn linux via this medium.

#!/bin/sh

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
twm &


This is my xstartup file if this can help anyone help me.

Try replacing it with this:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/gnome-session &

or

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
unset SESSION_MANAGER
exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources

-Chris

Good reference:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb/vnc/vnc.html

-Chris