Remote GUI Access to a Linode

VNC: Simplest, but slow due to polling graphics buffers and sending compressed images of content. Widest support on the client-side, even on smartphones and tablets.

XDMCP: Relatively simple, the slowest on high-latency connections due to blocking on round-trip requests, but relatively bandwidth-efficient because it sends only the X server draw requests. Low client-side support, rare on mobile platforms.

NoMachine NX: Least simple, but the fastest (both in responsiveness and bandwidth use) by a huge margin. Based on XDMCP, but uses a proxy cache to eliminate most round-trips. Proprietary (but free) server and client required. AFAIK, zero mobile support.

It comes down to personal preference. I tend to go for VNC when I need to set something up fast and dirty, and I go for NX when I need something longer-term with more performance.

@Guspaz:

VNC:

XDMCP:

NoMachine NX:

Excellent summary, I agree completely.

James

Guspaz, thanks a lot for your post. It was really helpful.

We would like to go with VNC because of the widespread client support and because it seems simple to get up-and-running on CentOS 6 and Fedora 15.

I think CentOS 6 and Fedora 15 have packages for TigerVNC.

I was able to do:

yum install tigervnc

yum install tigervnc-server

But then I tried the following, and I didn't get very far:

[root@myserver ~]# service vncserver start

Starting VNC server: no displays configured [FAILED]

So is my system ready to accept VNC connections?? Do I also need to install and run a graphical desktop environment, such as GNOME?? What do I need to do to get the VNC Server running??

Once again I need to reach out to the community for more help on this. Many thanks in advance!!

@BostonLinodeGuy:

What do I need to do to get the VNC Server running?

Googling for

centos vnc

turned up this recent link:

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/VNC-Server

which looks like what you need.

James

Thanks to everyone for their help. I was able to follow the link mentioned above and get TigerVNC Server running on my CentOS 6.2 Linode.

But I want to ask a more general question: what are the pros and cons of VNC versus RDP?? Why use one or the other for remotely accessing my Linode graphically?? Guspaz's summary was very informative, but I'm trying to get a bigger picture, and understand what the majority of people are actually using in the "real world".

Thanks again for all your help!!

RDP is a proprietary Microsoft protocol used as the basis for terminal services and remote desktop. It generally has excellent performance and is very easy to use (and with good mobile support), but it's only usefully supported as a host on Windows.

VNC is probably what most people use around here, since it's ubiquitous, but it's not what I'd use for actual remote user access. It's fine for getting into a remote machine occasionally when you need it, but the responsiveness for regular remote application use just isn't there (unless your users are on phat pipes close to the server).