Hi. I would like to know if it is possible to connect to a remote desktop that is running say Debian 8 with GNOME GUI. I have a server running through Microsoft Azure, and I noticed that they only offer connection by means of interfacing with a command line. However, I specifically need to run a program that is much more practical to use with a GUI as opposed to a CLI (I don't even think it properly supports a CLI at this time juncture), and while this program works under Windows, it is much more cost efficient for me to run it under Linux due to the licensing cost of Windows.
I spoke to a friend briefly who works with Ubuntu and he says he hasn't seen such a program before. I would appreciate it if somebody could either affirm or disprove his claim and possibly guide me towards a solution of what I am trying to achieve.

Absolutely. There are many ways to do what you want.

The one which may be the best for you (given that you want to use a single application) is to use X forwarding through ssh: http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/ssh.html. This will allow you to use your application from any machine with an ssh client (including putty under Windows). It'll work over the internet, and is easily configured to use PKI for security.

If you want to "remote in" to the desktop, like you would under Windows, there's VNC: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/lin...-server-setup/.

A third, and less secure way is to use XDMCP: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/intro.html. Though less secure, it's probably the easiest to configure since everything you need is likely already installed.

Hello and welcome to LQ.


I am somewhat favorable to Teamviewer. I use it to support a not for profit.

There are all sorts of ways to do what you want too as noted above are some ways.

We might be able to provide a better answer with more specifics.

You might be able to run a free virtual machine too.

Install some vnc server (i believe tightvnc is the default for Debian 8), set it to launch on startup. It will launch an internal X server and you can connect to it via VNC protocol.
Auto launched stuff can be controlled from $HOME/.vnc/xstartup
This setup is designed for headless machines, no real X server needed. Also this can be run from an unprivileged user account.
As for security, make it listen on localhost ONLY and connect to it with ssh port forwarding.

I would use either X forwarding or VNC. I use tightvnc as the windows vnc client, and VcxSrv on windows for X-forwarding via putty ssh.

For vnc on the server machine, I usually use x11vnc and start it manually when I'm connected over ssh, this way there isn't a full-time vnc service running on the server.

Both mechanisms work adequately over the internet.

Thanks guys for all of the input. I will give your proposed solutions a shot.

With XWindows, you can always open a window from one host on another. I often use it just between my two computers (one running Solaris and one running Mac OS X, with the Mac OS X one being the one that is receiving the window from the other since OS X windows can't be shared in that way since its native windows are not XWindows windows, but it does support displaying XWindows windows) that share one monitor. With Gigabit Ethernet you hardly even notice it's running on another computer.

FWIW, the stuff required for XDMCP is not already installed. The Ubuntu VMs Microsoft Azure provide are fundamentally slightly modified plain Ubuntu server installs - meaning there is no X, no GUI packages installed at all by default.

You can install it with apt, of course. But depending on how the particular application works, and how graphics intensive it is, performance over XDMCP could be extremely poor. I find VNC's performance to be pretty good.

If it's just one specific application that needs to be run, then the simplest method may be to use ssh tunneling of X. You still have to use apt to install X, of course. But there's no need to set up any sort of X server (XDMCP or VNC or otherwise). The X server in this case would be what you normally think of as the "client" - namely, the local machine.

Even with gigabit ethernet, I find it doesn't work so hot with a web browser. But that's more of a stunt than anything else (not much reason to do such a thing).

Now, the OP is asking about a Microsoft Azure VM, so the connection is going to be a lot slower and a LOT laggier than a local gigabit ethernet connection. Also, the low end Azure VMs are really pathetic in terms of raw performance. I have a bottom end Ubuntu VM on Azure. It's plenty good enough for the extremely lightweight web server task I have it set up for (just a throwaround practice machine, really). But it's really lame. We're talking 667MB of RAM and a single Xeon core (E5-2674@2.4Ghz).

I use X11vnc as a VNC server on Slackware. It works quite nicely.

I think I started using it because Klaatu recommended it in a podcast about the time I decided I should learn about VNCs.