What, if any, are the advantages of putty/ssh over a remote desktop environment like KRDC for remote administration? I remotely administer a Debian Etch machine used by my mother, who lives a couple of hundred miles away. Presently I use KRDC. Thanks for your insight and time to comment.

KRDC is a client program for vnc and rdp(windows). By default vnc isn't designed to be secure while ssh is. Apart from that? You can copy files with ssh (scp), you can script it

Here is a good article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...sktop_software

Thank you, klearview. Also, do I understand correctly it's possible with putty/ssh to remotely log-in? Presently I rely on my mother to physically be there at least at the beginning of the session to log in. I'd like to relieve her of that inconvenience, if possible. What can you tell me about that? Thanks!

Yes - all you need on the remote machine is ssh server running. By and large if you have an ssh access to a machine there isn't any difference to having a physical access. Using sshfs you can even mount remote filesystem on your local machine.

Remember though that ssh is mostly designed for terminal sessions. You can forward X sessions (use 'ssh -X user@host') but in my experience they would be pretty slow over internet.

Here's a little trick I used to do with KDE (it works if you're running KDE 3 not KDE 4). Make sure that your kicker (KDE panel) is situated at the bottom of the screen while kicker panel on your mother's machine is at the top (or the other way round). Then run this:

ssh -X user@host 'kicker'


Now you will get 2 kicker panels on your screen - with start button and everything - one will be for your local machine, the other will be actually running on your mother's pc.

Cool! Thanks, Klearview.