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Does Linux have a stable and reliable remote desktop server yet? Using Wayland. I love being able to remote into my home PC and experience near lag-free use vi

Does Linux have a stable and reliable remote desktop server yet? Using Wayland. I love being able to remote into my home PC and experience near lag-free use via RDP. I've tried the Gnome and KDE implementations but they aren't that great as a user who just wants to connect and use the PC. I found the gnome one confusing, as it had two options. One had to be logged into locally and unlocked first. The other didn't I believe but there was some other gotcha. Maybe having signed in once but then locked the session. I do remember not being able to RDP from a fresh reboot which made me think the machine failed to boot. KDE's implementation I think also suffered from having to log in locally first. I've made use of Sunshine and Moonlight for now. It works, but it's meant more for gaming. No copy and paste, more bandwidth or more cpu/gpu cycles, etc.

taeric 1y ago
I'm curious why you need a graphical remote experience? Note, I'm specifically not trying to dissuade you. My guess is that what is driving your need will likely lead you to specific solutions. Though, I do have to hazard a guess that Wayland will be a bit of a hiccup. Remove graphical desktops were niche enough that a lot of the good solutions for them in the past have not been high on people's radars.
glitchc 1y ago
VNC works really well for Linux based workstations. Both RealVNC and TightVNC are good although RealVNC has started pushing their cloud offering recently. Install on both machines, one running as server, the other as a client.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  VNC does desktop sharing. That's useful, but very different from remote desktops. Wayland's lack of the ability to do actual remote desktops is the showstopper for Wayland for me.
  - Gormo 1y ago
    Wayland's lack of readiness for production use is indeed a major roadblock to using it in production.
  - glitchc 1y ago
    I'm not sure where this hair is being split. How do you distinguish "Remote Desktop" from "Desktop Sharing"? Given that both VNC and RDP are defined as "Remote Desktop Sharing" software, how are they not alike?
hansvm 1y ago
Are there use cases where you would actually want Wayland in its current state?
- hollerith 1y ago
  Yes: when you care even a little about endpoint security (attack resistance).
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  Fractional scaling is essential with the higher pixel density current monitors have. No screen tearing is also nice.
Gormo 1y ago
> Does Linux have a stable and reliable remote desktop server yet? Only for about 20 years for graphical desktop and 34 years for console. Console options: Telnet, Rlogin, SSH. Graphical options: X forwarding, VNC, X2Go. > Using Wayland. Why?
Sean-Der 1y ago
Have you tried https://github.com/m1k1o/neko https://github.com/m1k1o/neko yet?
- mirashii 1y ago
  This is currently limited to X11 (though their docs say they could theoretically support other platforms)
openthc 1y ago
Have you checked out https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies ? ""Open-Source Low-Latency Accelerated Linux WebRTC HTML5 Remote Desktop Streaming Platform for Self-Hosting, Containers, Kubernetes, or Cloud/HPC""
- mirashii 1y ago
  That’s X11 only.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
KDE 4 months ago acknowledged that the login manager needed serious work. The roadmap includes remote login. https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-modern-plasma-login-manager/ https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-moder... The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a vnc password to keep rabble off the actual login screen. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop For the many many wlroots Wayland's, wayvnc is quite good. Their first FAQ question is about running over ssh, on a headless backend. https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq Personally I think sunshine & moonlight is 100% the way to go. There is one way client->host copy paste. Agreed that more would be better, but there are good independent tools for shuffling data around, lots of ways to fill in the gap. The bandwidth is very tuneable but yes 0.5mbit/s is going to be pretty rough. But sunshine will gladly use hardware encoding, that's very low latency, and that is basically free: there's dedicated encoders on any vaguely modern hardware. Being able to get av1 or HEVC for basically free feels about as good as it gets to me. Moonlight client of course will also decode in hardware too. Remote desktop-ing has never been so low impact to CPU or GPU, and the ability to do absolutely anything (watch videos even) with such high smoothness and low latency is stunning. 100% recommend sunshine+moonlight. Afaik, no way to remote login over it though?
tracker1 1y ago
Depends on what you need... I get a long way with Wireguard + SSH to my desktop for remote use. Usually using VS Code against a project directory with remoting extensions. You can also give RustDesk a shot for gui access.
selfhoster11 1y ago
The Gnome one is excellent. I think the issue you mentioned got solved in a recent version - upgrading to the latest version of the OS (non-LTS, if you have to) will let you pick up the latest version with that fix in place.

taeric 1y ago

I'm curious why you need a graphical remote experience? Note, I'm specifically not trying to dissuade you. My guess is that what is driving your need will likely lead you to specific solutions. Though, I do have to hazard a guess that Wayland will be a bit of a hiccup. Remove graphical desktops were niche enough that a lot of the good solutions for them in the past have not been high on people's radars.

glitchc 1y ago

VNC works really well for Linux based workstations. Both RealVNC and TightVNC are good although RealVNC has started pushing their cloud offering recently. Install on both machines, one running as server, the other as a client.

JohnFen 1y ago
VNC does desktop sharing. That's useful, but very different from remote desktops. Wayland's lack of the ability to do actual remote desktops is the showstopper for Wayland for me.
- Gormo 1y ago
  Wayland's lack of readiness for production use is indeed a major roadblock to using it in production.
- glitchc 1y ago
  I'm not sure where this hair is being split. How do you distinguish "Remote Desktop" from "Desktop Sharing"? Given that both VNC and RDP are defined as "Remote Desktop Sharing" software, how are they not alike?

hansvm 1y ago

Are there use cases where you would actually want Wayland in its current state?

hollerith 1y ago
Yes: when you care even a little about endpoint security (attack resistance).
dontlaugh 1y ago
Fractional scaling is essential with the higher pixel density current monitors have. No screen tearing is also nice.

Gormo 1y ago

> Does Linux have a stable and reliable remote desktop server yet? Only for about 20 years for graphical desktop and 34 years for console. Console options: Telnet, Rlogin, SSH. Graphical options: X forwarding, VNC, X2Go. > Using Wayland. Why?

Sean-Der 1y ago

Have you tried https://github.com/m1k1o/neko https://github.com/m1k1o/neko yet?

mirashii 1y ago
This is currently limited to X11 (though their docs say they could theoretically support other platforms)

openthc 1y ago

Have you checked out https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies ? ""Open-Source Low-Latency Accelerated Linux WebRTC HTML5 Remote Desktop Streaming Platform for Self-Hosting, Containers, Kubernetes, or Cloud/HPC""

mirashii 1y ago
That’s X11 only.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

KDE 4 months ago acknowledged that the login manager needed serious work. The roadmap includes remote login. https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-modern-plasma-login-manager/ https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-moder... The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a vnc password to keep rabble off the actual login screen. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop For the many many wlroots Wayland's, wayvnc is quite good. Their first FAQ question is about running over ssh, on a headless backend. https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq Personally I think sunshine & moonlight is 100% the way to go. There is one way client->host copy paste. Agreed that more would be better, but there are good independent tools for shuffling data around, lots of ways to fill in the gap. The bandwidth is very tuneable but yes 0.5mbit/s is going to be pretty rough. But sunshine will gladly use hardware encoding, that's very low latency, and that is basically free: there's dedicated encoders on any vaguely modern hardware. Being able to get av1 or HEVC for basically free feels about as good as it gets to me. Moonlight client of course will also decode in hardware too. Remote desktop-ing has never been so low impact to CPU or GPU, and the ability to do absolutely anything (watch videos even) with such high smoothness and low latency is stunning. 100% recommend sunshine+moonlight. Afaik, no way to remote login over it though?

tracker1 1y ago

Depends on what you need... I get a long way with Wireguard + SSH to my desktop for remote use. Usually using VS Code against a project directory with remoting extensions. You can also give RustDesk a shot for gui access.

selfhoster11 1y ago

The Gnome one is excellent. I think the issue you mentioned got solved in a recent version - upgrading to the latest version of the OS (non-LTS, if you have to) will let you pick up the latest version with that fix in place.