I've managed to get the VNC set up and I've connected into the VPS. However, I can't see any applications. I can just see a blank desktop with some preferences. I can't even get into the console/terminal.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 and NX VNC

NX doesn't normally use VNC. Have you specifically configured NX to use VNC instead of X? That sort of defeats the purpose of NX...

Did you actually install the desktop?

I think you have to do something like this as root:

apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

(At least that's what you used to have to do. Not sure about how 9.10. works)

You also have to get the nxclient, nxnode, and nxserver debs from nomachines.com, and install them (as root) with something like:

dpkg -i nxclient*

etc.

I usually install the distro on a spare machine at home, and generate a package list:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-get ... store.html

Then I use the list to bring the linode version back to something close to what you'd get with the install cd.

You don't need (and probably don't want) ubuntu-desktop to use nx unless you really want to have a remote Ubuntu desktop.

To run a single application, you can just install the basic X stuff and that application, and use NX to remote just that.

To install a basic desktop, installing IceWM or some other lightweight thing is enough to get that.

The problem with ubuntu-desktop is it will pull in a million dependencies for stuff you probably don't want; the UI network manager, bluetooth support, mail clients, openoffice, etc.