VNC: Remote Desktop for Free

Posted by Alex Galonsky on 03/19/07 in Productivity, Office, Internet, Utilities, Applications

Have you ever been at school, work, or a friend’s house, and needed to get on your home computer? If so, you may want to set up a Remote Desktop system. Remote Desktop systems let you control your computer from other computers, giving you access to all your files and applications. You may even want to control computers on your home LAN. Apple’s Remote Desktop starts at $300, but there is a free and easy alternative.

VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, is a remote desktop protocol that many free clients and servers utilize. OSXVNc, the server I use, is available here. When you start the app, you are given a preferences window, in which you can set the server password and more. Now, if you want to access your computer from outside your network, and you are using a router, you will need to forward the port 5900 to the computer on which the server is running. Note that in order to access your computer remotely, your computer must be on and connected to the internet.

On the client side, there are many options available. If you are looking for a Mac VNC client, I have found Chicken of the VNC the best, which is also free. But if you are not on your own Mac, there is a very easy way to connect to your home computer. RealVNC, who makes VNC clients and servers for Linux and Windows, also makes a Java applet VNC client that can run on almost any computer. This Google search will give you many mirrors for this Java applet. All you need to do is enter your IP or domain name, as well as your password. Speaking of IP addresses, if you don’t have a domain for your home network, you will need to remember or write down your IP address. If you plan to use VNC frequently, you may consider getting a free domain name from a service like DynDNS. Also, your IP will most likely change every time you restart your modem, so you may want to grab a updating utility, which are also available at DynDNS.

Remote Desktop may not work well with laptop owners and those who don’t keep their Macs running all the time, but nonetheless, VNC is a great, free solution.

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joebob2406 said on

March 19th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

Has anyone else had trouble with the newer Vine Server that replaced osxvnc? I upgraded to vine and ever since, i’ve not been able to connect to my home machine.

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Michael said on

March 19th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

ive been using chicken of the vnc and realy like it. easy to set up.

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Sherb said on

March 19th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

I love ARD.. it’s great fun if you know the admin pass at school

Joseph Lochli said on

March 19th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

My computer’s both a VNC server and an FTP server, which came in handy when I forgot to print out my report. Just had to use VNC to save it in a .doc and used FTP to download it.

Steve said on

March 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

I have OSX Tiger which as built in VNC (just turn on Apple remote desktop) but I’ve found the built in server seems very slow (and seems to give error messages on Windows VNC clients). Using OSVNC (aka Vinserver) I get steady fast connections with quick screen refreshes, on the same clinets in Windows which seem to ‘choke’ on the Tiger VNC server. Anyone else notice this?

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alej744 said on

March 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pm

Sounds confusing

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Sunset said on

March 19th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

VNC is great, it’s just weird to me that Apple charges so much for their software when other is free.

I guess its kind of like Mac OS X vs Vista, do you want to pay $129 for full features or $400 for full features?

Alex Galonsky said on

March 19th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

The Apple system is much more high quality than VNC - it actually looks like you are using the computer you are controlling. Same with the remote desktop that comes with WinXP Pro.

Yohannes Wijaya said on

March 20th, 2007 at 2:16 am

for those of you who would rather have a secure connection via ssh, check out this http://urltea.com/2v?mac2mac or if you are securely connecting to a windows machine http://urltea.com/2w?mac2windoze

Optionally, you guys want to check out hamachi, a zero-config vpn app which i use to play dota

Mac vs PC said on

March 20th, 2007 at 5:02 am

Great find! Going to check-out “Chicken of the VNC” and see how it compares to ARD?

http://www.switchingtomac.com

joebob2406 said on

March 20th, 2007 at 9:19 am

I can connect using the apple remote desktop setting but for some reason VineServer doesn’t work for me. I can’t connect to it. Anyone else have this problem?

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brainscan said on

March 20th, 2007 at 6:39 pm

I had no problems with Vine Server (on G5). Maybe you guys are setting it up wrong, or trying to access the wrong port.

Also, FYI, you really need to also read about using ssh tunneling to secure your connection. Otherwise, bad people can see your network traffic and have full access to your machine.

adin said on

March 20th, 2007 at 6:48 pm

Why wouldn’t you just use the VNC server built into the (free) Apple Remote Desktop Server? Just select “VNC viewers my control screen with password” option and add password. No need for 3rd party apps.

And you can still use CoTVNC as your client (on OSX). (I’d still recommend using the SSH tunneling to make the connection more secure) No need for ARD if you’re not wanting the advanced ARD features like app distribution.

Only feature that I see missing in this setup is screen scaling on the client. (And that the current CoTVNC has a bug that switches the middle and right mouse buttons)

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Acronyms said on

March 20th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

What about built-in server in new OS?

Josiah Pugh said on

March 20th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

VNC is pretty awesome.

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derek said on

March 20th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

Remote Desktop for Mac is really geared towards administrators working with many Apple machines (think school IT departments) You can do so much more than just control a live session. You can push out files and updates and really have full administrative control over a large OSX LAN.

Jeremy said on

March 20th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

VNC is very laggy.

Jason said on

March 20th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

Linksys WRT54GL + DD-WRT (VPN version) = Remote Awesomeness!

I thought it was impossible to get around the work firewall to connect to my home network. But with the above combination, it was easy, as long as I use port 8080 to get out of the firewall. Now I just need to get home to set up the VNC server on my Mac, and I’ll be good to go.

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James said on

March 20th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

adin:
The built-in VNC server is very, very slow, even for a LAN connection. One problem is that it uses lossless compression, and that’s not ideal for all the composited eye candy that Aqua uses. It’s almost unusable, IMO.

OSXvnc uses JPEG compression, and although JPEG compression is not good for text, in practice it performs so much faster that it’s worth the artifacting.

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Alex said on

March 20th, 2007 at 10:49 pm

Is this suppose to be news? I have being doing this for years in Windows. I don’t get it……

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David Alan Hjelle said on

March 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Just for the record, probably one of the most significant differences between the built-in VNC server and Vine Server/OSXVNC is that the latter supports multiple sessions on Tiger: i.e. you can have one person sitting at one user’s login at the computer itself, and you can be VNC’d in to your desktop (like Fast User Switching) via VNC. Quite convenient, but the built-in VNC server doesn’t support it, AFAIK.

And, yes, that is one thing Windows (the expensive versions, at least) has been able do before Macs. VNC itself has been around for Mac OS X since version 10.1, if not earlier, I think.

Rennervater said on

March 21st, 2007 at 4:32 am

VNC is the best thing since sliced bread for anyone with multiple linux boxes….:) Its soo cool to use from school to home!

joebob2406 said on

March 21st, 2007 at 8:15 am

I figured it out that it is because i wasn’t blocking my computer’s sleep setting. Thanks.

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Themacthinker said on

March 21st, 2007 at 9:55 am

You don’t need to install any VNC server on your mac:
1. All you need is a VNC client on any computer and then you go the your sharing windows under system preferences and activate the Remote Desktop from the list of apps that you can share. Then open the preferences/options for Remote Desktop and check the box for “VNC Users can access this computer using this password”. Type in a password and your done.
No need to install not even the Apple Remote Desktop application.

2. Apple Remote Desktop application may have vnc capability in case someone wants to connect to other computers (non mac) via vnc.
—————-
For more tips on Mac, visit www.mostofmymac.com

AnT0ha said on

June 14th, 2007 at 10:28 am

It seems too hard for me. I’ve seached in internet and found an easy and rother cheep TechinlineRemoteDesctop

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AnT0ha said on

June 14th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

I forgot to give adress: www.techinline.com

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Lukas said on

July 8th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

Free deskshare tool ….
Try it out!

Lukas said on

July 8th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

website: http://www.viewmydesk.com

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custom web design said on

October 9th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

It’s not very safely. I use VNC but somebody hack my laptop with VNC.

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December 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

Windows vista ultimate hack

Nice points…

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