Not VNC based solution of a Remote Desktop access to Linux from outside

Question

I want to use Linux at work on my workstation PC but currently I can't. The main reason is lack of useful Remote Desktop access to Linux from outside. By useful Remote Desktop access I mean how it's implemented in Windows. In Windows you can connect to a locally started session and continue it remotely. When you do this the local computer will be locked. You can go back to the local computer, unlock it and take over the local session by entering your password. Also you can connect to a Windows computer without any existing session and this will start a new one remotely. After that you can go to that computer, unlock it and continue that session locally. I need this functionality to continue my work outside the office or from other location in the office (a meeting room or a workplace of a colleague).

Today's Remote Desktop server solutions in Linux can't provide the above functionality. I've tried xrdp, several implementations of VNC and X2Go. None of them function as needed. They do one of the following:

1. Always start a new session
2. Continue a locally started session in a sharing mode when the local computer is not locked and anyone near it can see what I do and even intervene to that session by local mouse and keyboard.

X2Go has even additional problem supporting different resolutions of remote and local computers.

I asked this question about a year ago in the wayland-devel mailing list:

1. Remote Desktop with Wayland
2. Re1: Remote Desktop with Wayland
3. Re2: Remote Desktop with Wayland

Is something changed in the support of the Remote Desktop Linux access since than? Wayland or Xorg - doesn't matter.

Please don't offer any VNC based solution since VNC can't do it architecturally. It's just a frame-buffer viewer, like TeamViewer.

Answer 1

Either you can use GNU screen (if you are a command line user), or you can use commercial tools like TeamViewer (if you prefere GUI).

Using GUI is traightforward, so I describe usage of GNU screen. First, you should invoke command:

$ screen

Then you can create new termials with ctrl+a+c, switch between them with ctrl+a+space or ctrl+a+a, detach from it by pressing ctrl+a+a, and then reattach it again by:

$ screen -r

More can be found here.

I should mention that you should have access to your server with ssh or something like that.

Answer 2

Please don't offer any VNC based solution since VNC can't do it architecturally. It's just a frame-buffer viewer, like TeamViewer.

But that doesn't mean you need to rule VNC out completely:

1. Start a headless Xvnc server
2. Connect to it remotely with a VNC client and transport link of your choice (e.g. SSH tunnel)
3. move applications between your running desktop session (headed X server) and the Xvnc server as needed - see Can I move a running application to a different X server?

For Wayland, I think there is some work in progress, but I'm not sure about the current status.

And of course for text based applications use a terminal multiplexer like tmux or screen.

Answer 3

I was looking for something very similar, The closest I got was freerdp-shadow-cli.

Those are Debian man pages but they are available for multiple distros.

Their GitHub seems very active, so you might want to raise a question there for support.

I’m not sure if xrdp has a similar implementation. It might be worth taking a look: