I recently set my girlfriend's father up with a computer running Kubuntu. This is his first computer, and he needs help from time to time, but he lives almost a half-hour away, so "swinging by" isn't very attractive. I'd like to set up some type of remote support option. For my Windows based PC's, I use Logmein.com, which has been great, but it doesn't work on Linux.

I'm familiar with VNC, and I know it works with Linux, but as I understand it's dangerous to leave it running on an internet facing port. Are there any better options? I've used SSH before, and I've heard of tunnelling, but I don't know if I can tie the two (VNC/SSH) together for a secure remote support solution.

Any pointers? Even suggestions for what to search for in Google would be a huge help

http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/VNC/vnc-over-ssh.html
http://www.bobpeers.com/linux/vnc_ssh
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/tunnel...ssh-howto.html

Basically you want to tunnel the pretty insecure VNC protocol over the very secure SSH. Not overly difficult, I didn't read any of those links except to make sure they were for linux as opposed to Windows but you shouldn't have too many dramas setting it up