The title sounds like a simple and boring concept, right? VNC is easy to do accross platforms right? In its default configuration, it sure is. But what if you want to do things like encrypt your traffic to Windows boxes, and you want to do AD authentication, and throw some ACL’s in for good measure. While this scenario isn’t exciting or overly complex, it does present some interesting issues.
We chose UltraVNC to manage remote desktop access for some our PC’s for the reasons listed above. It does all of those things. The problem cropped up when I started using a linux machine as my primary desktop. I assumed that UltraVNC’s implementation of the aforementioned features would be ubiquitous amongst all of the common VNC clients. I was wrong. Needless to say, if you’re using UltraVNC’s RC4 encryption and Active Directory authentication, the clients available to you in Linux are slim.
I thought I had an easy fix for this situation. I figured I’d be smart and throw the UltraVNC client into WINE and all my worries would go away. Wrong, there are issues with UltraVNC in WINE that prevent the very features I need from working. This link to the WINE bug tracker details the problem and now notes that the problem has been fixed. Fortunately, I have found an native Linux/X11 solution that seems to fit my bill without the use of WINE.
SSVNC does everything I need, all while supporting the UltraVNC’s security options. Don’t be turned off by its lack of shiny interface or hip site, SSVNC is a nuts and bolts type of app that gets it done. Upon discovering SSVNC I was able to reliably connect to our workstations (running UltraVNC servers) within an hour. If you need a swiss army knife VNC client for your Linux machine, check out SSVNC.
