VNC: Virtual Network Coolness!

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performaman's picture
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VNC: Virtual Network Coolness!

I just ran a VNC for the first time, and I must say that it is really cool to be able to control one computer from another. I set my laptop (Windows XP Home) up as the server, and our family desktop (Danmsmall Linux running from ramdisk) as the client over 10/100 ethernet. There is some lag between the client and server screens, but I can run AIM quite well as well as Firefox and, I guess, most other programs. I can't get audio from Winamp to play through the client's speakers, but this may be due to the client OS not supporting sound drivers. I'll try with Windows client later.

Reverend Darkness's picture
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re:VNC: Virtual Network Coolness!

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Yup, it is definately cool... I'm setting up my Mac at work so that I can connect from my PC at home and do the things I can't do from here...

Of course, in order for that to work, I have to remeber to start the VNC server before I leave work... and make sure that the Mac is tuned on... which the storms took care of last night... ugh..

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Bye bye to the KVM switch?

Another ideia is to have 2 PCs, one running Linux and the other running Windows and a Mac, all networked with Gigabit Ethernet. The Mac and Windows box would be VNC servers, while the Linux box would act as a file server and as VNC client. The Linux box would esentially function as the only PC the user would come into contact with, since it would foward input to the Mac and Windows box. This could allow a user, for example, to run Mac, Windows, and Linux apps all from one desktop (or so it would seem).

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Cool- part II

If I run VNC in fullscreen mode under Windows, it is indistinguishable from running Windows! I'm sure that the same could be said for Linux, or MacOS.
This bring up some other fascinating possibilites:
What if you wanted to do some warstrolling, but it was too wet? Then you could strap a subnotebook (in a weatherproof housing) to the back of a RC car. Have the notebook control the car via serial port, VNC to the notebook via 802.11b/g, and drive away, just like NASA.

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You are limited to the effect

You are limited to the effective range of the RC car. IE, you won't be able to remotely control the car farther then 2 or 3 blocks max. Heh, plus what would you do if somebody plucks the notebook off the car? You mite be able to watch them do it though! Wink

Edit: D'oh! Didn't see that you said serial. Well, your still limited to the range of wifi, which is even shoter, unless you had sevral AP's linked to gether (hey, then your range could be pritty far!).

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Longer-Range but slower...

You could use an old 900Mhz card for communications with the notebook, which has a longer range but tops out at about 2Mbps.
Or, if you had GPS, you could write a program to rotate a directional antenna at your house so that it is aligned with the car's omni. But this would be kinda hard.
But fun, once you made it work.

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I put the VNC viewer in the s

I put the VNC viewer in the shared folder on my laptop's harddisk and ran it from the desktop. So there's a remote application running a remote desktop. Hmmmm...

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Oh yeah?

I used a viewer on XP to connect to my Mac (Panther) at work, then remotely ran the viewer to connect to my PC-XP sitting right next to it at work, then ran the XP viewer app to connect to a Mandrake 9 box... by the time I was done, the lag was somewhere around 30 seconds for a mouse click.

That was fun...

(BTW, firewalls and kerberos prevented me from connecting directly to the XP or the Linux Box)

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Gadzooks!

I used a viewer on XP to connect to my Mac (Panther) at work, then remotely ran the viewer to connect to my PC-XP sitting right next to it at work, then ran the XP viewer app to connect to a Mandrake 9 box…

Good grief, man...you trying to create a rift in the space-time continuum?

If Stephen Hawking knew about that, he'd run over your foot and tell you to smarten up!

Crazy Eddie.

Almost seriously though...that kind of thing you really do have to try at least once. It's like seeing how many emulators you can get running other emulators within emulators; or building a floppy-based drive array.

jt
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Re: Gadzooks!


Good grief, man...you trying to create a rift in the space-time continuum?

If Stephen Hawking knew about that, he'd run over your foot and tell you to smarten up!

ROTFLMFAO!!!!!!!! Acute


Crazy Eddie.

The Mote in God's Eye? Dirol

jt Wink

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Like a Russian Babushka Doll...

hmmm... I didn't think about using Basilisk on XP and using a VNC viewer there to connect to...

OW!

Quit it, Stephen!

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Fyunch(click!)

hmmm… I didn’t think about using Basilisk on XP and using a VNC viewer there to connect to…

Last I checked, XP complains about Basilisk's network .dll or .sys - which ever it was - as being 'too stinkin' old' so it may not work...or you may have to use the NT version.

The Mote in God’s Eye?

10 points and a gold star! Just finished reading it (again). One of the best sci-fi novels I've read.
I brought it up because the Rev made a Gripping Hand reference some time ago...8)

jt
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The Lord of Chaos Manor's . . .

. . . "King David's Space Ship" is a loosly related (pre-quel or precursor?) mote goodie. I never knew the dynamic duo did a sequel . . .

* happy! happy! joy! joy! Acute *

I'll have to look for it . . .

jt :ebc:

p.s. Dan Forrester'd have to be one of my top SciFIdols®.

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VNC and Audio

I don't think VNC supports streaming the audio over the connection. For that, I think you'll need one of the commercial products (like PCAnywhere). You could always do something weird like run Icecast or ShoutCast or whatever on the server if you only want audio from Winamp and then listen to it on XMMS (though I doubt Damn Small Linux comes with that). Or you could setup Ice/Shoutcast and have the headphone jack connected to the line-in jack to have audio from anything (just make sure the line-in is the only input source...)

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Damnsmall has XMMS

It's had it since verson 0.5 or so. And it sreams.
Damnsmall also has a webserver.

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Ok, I just didn't think Damn

Ok, I just didn't think Damn Small had it because the deps would eat up space. Right now I use either Knoppix or the Bootable Cluster CD (need something to speed up those POVRay renders Smile whenever I need a live cd. Haven't used Damn Small since 0.4.x or so.

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