[vox-tech] VNC - awesome!

[Rob Rogers]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 06:25:24PM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 1. A Google search turned up a number of different VNC clients like
>    "realvnc", "ultravnc", and "tightvnc".  The one I downloaded was
>    from:
> 
>       http://www.realvnc.com/
> 
>    The server was installed on a win2k machine and the rpm for my Linux
>    client was converted into a deb from an rpm via alien.  I chose this
>    implementation (realvnc) because it was obviously GPL'd and the first
>    one I found.  I had no way of comparing the different
>    implementations.
> 
>    Is there one implementation that's better than the others?  Why did
>    this piece of software fork so many times?

I hadn't heard of ultravnc before, but I'd guess it's just
a customized version. Right from the RealVNC homepage is "RealVNC is a
UK company founded in 2002 by a team from the world-leading AT&T
Laboratories in Cambridge. The company was established to commercially
develop, enhance and promote VNC, the innovative remote access software
with a widespread international user base."

VNC was originally developed by Olivetti Research Labs (AKA ORL... who
did a lot of other really cool stuff) and a couple years back they were
bought out by AT&T and are now called AT&T Labratories Cambridge
(http://www.uk.research.att.com/). The RealVNC people were are all
former ORL employees who IIRC, left to form their own company sometime
after the buyout.

TightVNC (xtightvnc package on debian) is what I use. It includes some
performance enhancements over the original (it's backwards compatible
though. The extra features are only available if both ends support it).
Their main focus I believe is optimizing the compression, which makes it
easier to use over a lower bandwidth connection (like when I'm fixing a
problem on my parent's Win98 box 3000 miles away over a cable modem
connection).

> 2. The server is a win2k machine.  When using VNC, the machine is taken
>    over; you can't log in at the console.  Is there a way to make Win2k
>    multi-user?  I was under the impression that this OS is considered by 
>    Microsoft to be a server class OS.  Can't more than one person log
>    in?  Is there a registry setting or something?  Sorry.  I really
>    don't know much about Windows.  This is probably a really dumb
>    question.

MS has a different view on things than your standard UNIX user.
Remember, Windows is all about the GUI. Up through Win2K, I don't
believe there's really any way for multiple users to be logged onto the
same computer at a time. I believe with WinXP this may have changed, but
I don't know the details (I haven't even touched a WinXP box yet).