[desktop-discuss] Connect to OSX Desktop from Indiana / OpenSolaris

[James Cornell]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Mar 2008, Iban Nieto wrote:
>   
>> Is there a way to connect to Apple OSX desktop via VNC or someother 
>> remote desktop management client?
>>
>> I'm trying with vncviewer (SUNWvncviewer at 4.1.2,5.11-0.79) from pkg 
>> repositories with no luck (protocol error, version supported from 
>> OSX is newer than the vncviewer client).
>>     
>
> Unfortunately, the VNC built into OS-X Leopard crashes (after drawing 
> one screen) when used with standard VNC clients.  The only VNC client 
> that I know of which works with it (according to other people) is 
> called "Chicken Of The VNC" (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/) 
> and it is Mac only.  The OS-X VNC session initiation is non-conformant 
> with the VNC specification from the RealVNC folks.
>
> I installed an alternative VNC server on OS-X called "Vine Server for 
> OS X" 
> (http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine/server/vineosx/index.html) 
> which does interoperate with Unix VNC clients but is likely slower 
> than Apple's built in server.
>
> Bob
> ======================================
> Bob Friesenhahn
> bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
> GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
>
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> desktop-discuss mailing list
> desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org
>   
It's slower at higher resolutions as it lacks a mirror driver as the 
RealVNC server for Windows has.  I believe TightVNC and UltraVNC also 
have mirror drivers to draw only modified regions of the screen as well, 
but only on Windows.  The only accelerated option is Apple Remote 
Desktop, and there's ways to enable hidden features in the free bundled 
version, but nothing to reduce the VNC protocol version or fix the 
initialization compatibility problem.  It'd be nice to have X11VNC for 
OSX, since it hooks the actual server directly, thus eliminating the 
abstraction and fake frame buffer.  I've used Vine many times to share 
my notebook's desktop, and it seems to function well if you lower the 
resolution to a 4:3 ratio such as 1024x768 with 16-bit. (Thousands of 
Colors)  It is not very functional over WAN (Internet) unless you have 
1mbit upload and 30ms or less latency.  This is just  from my experience 
though, there might be other tweaks to make it perform better.  Anyone 
interested in the better of interoperability needs to spam Apple with 
feature requests specifically asking them to conform to the latest VNC 
protocol specification.  Without customer demand, and I mean a lot of 
it, Apple buckles up and gets pushy and deaf.  Perhaps since Chicken of 
the VNC is open-source, someone could figure out what specific changes 
they made to make it interoperable with Apple's implementation.

http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=64347

James