Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [498]
The remaining tabs provide additional options. For example, Local Resources allows you to stream sound to your terminal and specify key combinations as well as language options for your keyboard. You can also select a program to start immediately by specifying it in the next tab to the right, entitled Programs. This saves time logging
Figure 28-7. Display tab window of Terminal Server client
in to the server and selecting icons to launch a program if you use only one application, such as Microsoft Outlook.
The Performance tab allows you to enable bitmap caching, motion events, and a window manager's key bindings and its decorations. You may want to hide the window manager's decorations so that you can immediately tell that you have opened a terminal session.
Once you have pressed the Connect button on the bottom of the Terminal Server client screen, you will see a logon screen for the server. For instance, Figure 28-8 shows the log-on box for a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
The remote application screen also appears as a Linux application on the desktop. On the task bar at the bottom of Figure 28-8, you can see that the open application named Gateway Terminal Service Client appears as the second application from the
Figure 28-8. Logging in to a Windows Terminal Server
left. Once you enter your username and password, you can log on to the remote desktop and see an application window such as the one in Figure 28-9, which shows a live calendar view of Outlook 2000 SR-1 running on a Windows desktop.
Virtual Network Connection
In this section our emphasis switches to a widely used remote technology called Virtual Network Connection (VNC ). We discuss how VNC works and its value in heterogeneous networks. We also discuss installing it on different hosts and how to use it.
More people use VNC than any other remote desktop tool; several open source VNC projects exist. Servers exist for Linux, Windows, Macintosh, and Unix operating systems. Clients exist for Linux, Windows, Macintosh, Unix, MS-DOS, Palm, and Java. Still, not all Linux users understand how valuable VNC can be.
Perhaps VNC's most powerful feature is to let you control a number of different computers from one keyboard, mouse, and monitor. In a sense, VNC can function as a virtual KVM switch.
Figure 28-9. Microsoft Office running on the Linux desktop using Terminal Server
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Tip
A KVM switch is a hardware device that allows a user to control multiple computers from a single keyboard, video monitor, and mouse. KVM is an acronym for keyboard, video, mouse.
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In Figure 28-10, you can see a remote session of VNC running on a Fedora Core 3 GNOME desktop. If you look closely, you can see the GNOME panels at the bottom of the screen. In this figure, we have opened a session of a popular VNC implementation called TightVNC. In the window, you will notice that we have accessed a Microsoft Windows XP desktop and opened the native Remote Desktop client application, which we could use to start a Terminal Services session. VNC displays the entire remote desktop, not just a single application.
VNC requires a client and server to create a session. In the previous example, the server runs on the remote desktop and we used the vncviewer command to start the session. It put up the small dialog box shown in Figure 28-11.
Figure 28-10. Opening a remote VNC session in GNOME on Fedora Core 3
Figure 28-11. Logging on to a remote VNC desktop
Figure 28-11 shows the simplicity of starting a remote session:
Start vncviewer from the command line.
Enter the TCI/IP address of the remote server in the dialog box and press Enter.
At the resulting password prompt, enter your password on the remote system.
At that point, you should see a window containing the remote desktop, similar to the one in Figure 28-12.
Figure 28-12 shows