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I finally transitioned to Linux on my work desktop at the end of last year, after using WSL for a number of years and Linux on my home desktops for ages. I foun

by kdtsh 5y ago

I finally transitioned to Linux on my work desktop at the end of last year, after using WSL for a number of years and Linux on my home desktops for ages. I found that managing a Windows 10 VM in virt-manager for all the Windows-specific stuff is fine at the moment - nothing in particular has broken in my workflow. I find there’s slightly less mental overhead, but I haven’t yet figured out a good way to manage little configuration changes made to text files. Only gripes are that I have experienced a few GNOME bugs with no explanation, like mouse gestures randomly breaking until I reboot - still, I just take this as an opportunity to reboot my computer. I also can no longer use Remote Desktop - VNC is too much of a pain and I can’t ‘steal’ my own session, and SSH forwarding is dead slow. (If anyone has a Remote Desktop solution for Linux that just works, I’d love to hear it.) I can’t imagine ever really using Windows 11 at this point, at least not for a few years and then in passing.

nulbyte 5y ago
Can you elaborate on your issues with VNC? I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to 'steal a session. Are you using Wayland or X11? I understand there may be some differences, but haven't explored them. GNOME has desktop sharing built-in. I believe it is VNC based, but maybe you'll have better luck with something built into GNOME. SSH forwarding works fine for single apps, but for a true remote X desktop, I've usually configured XDMCP in the past. If you use Chrome, there is also Chrome Remote Desktop (remotedesktop.google.com). It worked fairly well when I used it last, but that was a while ago.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > Can you elaborate on your issues with VNC? I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to 'steal a session. With RDP on Windows, if I stay logged in with programs running and walk away from my computer and remote in to it, I will get the same session I left open. Unlike VNC, this session will resize everything to fit my client's preferences because it isn't just passing screenshots or a video feed of the desktop back.
- kdtsh 5y ago
  By ‘steal a session’ I mean be currently logged into my computer, either with the desktop locked or unlocked, and to jump onto another computer and log into the same session - so I get all my open programs, windows, etc. if that makes sense. The understanding I got was that this simply isn’t possible with VNC, or if it is it’d a major stuff-around. This really makes or breaks Remote Desktop for me. I’m using Wayland, which is the Fedora 35 default. I considered X11 but the experience isn’t quite as smooth for the day-to-day stuff in Fedora and I just didn’t want to work around odd quirks if I could avoid it. I tried the GNOME desktop sharing, but as far as I could see you need to be already logged in to jump in. Besides that it worked OK, though I recall screen resolution being a bit strange, like having 1024x768 or similar which is really quite small for GNOME’s big windows. I never looked into whether these issues I found were configurable, but they don’t seem to be easily accessible options if they are.
  - cbsks 5y ago
    One hacky solution is to use run a VNC server on your desktop and connect to it locally. Then you can connect to that VNC server remotely and access all your stuff. The issue I ran into was with multiple monitors. Stretching a VNC window to span multiple monitors is doable, but the window manager in the VNC session won’t know where the borders are and will treat it as one giant monitor. Using one big monitor is a workaround.
artificialLimbs 5y ago
>> I haven’t yet figured out a good way to manage little configuration changes made to text files I have a private git repo for this. I keep a copy of whatever directory structure I need in ~/_files. I wrote a small 'install.sh' script to install my packages and move the files around. I guess I'll get around to rsyncing them instead of manually moving them some day, but changes are few enough to warrant that yet.

by kdtsh 5y ago

nulbyte 5y ago

Can you elaborate on your issues with VNC? I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to 'steal a session. Are you using Wayland or X11? I understand there may be some differences, but haven't explored them. GNOME has desktop sharing built-in. I believe it is VNC based, but maybe you'll have better luck with something built into GNOME. SSH forwarding works fine for single apps, but for a true remote X desktop, I've usually configured XDMCP in the past. If you use Chrome, there is also Chrome Remote Desktop (remotedesktop.google.com). It worked fairly well when I used it last, but that was a while ago.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Can you elaborate on your issues with VNC? I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to 'steal a session. With RDP on Windows, if I stay logged in with programs running and walk away from my computer and remote in to it, I will get the same session I left open. Unlike VNC, this session will resize everything to fit my client's preferences because it isn't just passing screenshots or a video feed of the desktop back.
kdtsh 5y ago
By ‘steal a session’ I mean be currently logged into my computer, either with the desktop locked or unlocked, and to jump onto another computer and log into the same session - so I get all my open programs, windows, etc. if that makes sense. The understanding I got was that this simply isn’t possible with VNC, or if it is it’d a major stuff-around. This really makes or breaks Remote Desktop for me. I’m using Wayland, which is the Fedora 35 default. I considered X11 but the experience isn’t quite as smooth for the day-to-day stuff in Fedora and I just didn’t want to work around odd quirks if I could avoid it. I tried the GNOME desktop sharing, but as far as I could see you need to be already logged in to jump in. Besides that it worked OK, though I recall screen resolution being a bit strange, like having 1024x768 or similar which is really quite small for GNOME’s big windows. I never looked into whether these issues I found were configurable, but they don’t seem to be easily accessible options if they are.
- cbsks 5y ago
  One hacky solution is to use run a VNC server on your desktop and connect to it locally. Then you can connect to that VNC server remotely and access all your stuff. The issue I ran into was with multiple monitors. Stretching a VNC window to span multiple monitors is doable, but the window manager in the VNC session won’t know where the borders are and will treat it as one giant monitor. Using one big monitor is a workaround.

artificialLimbs 5y ago

>> I haven’t yet figured out a good way to manage little configuration changes made to text files I have a private git repo for this. I keep a copy of whatever directory structure I need in ~/_files. I wrote a small 'install.sh' script to install my packages and move the files around. I guess I'll get around to rsyncing them instead of manually moving them some day, but changes are few enough to warrant that yet.