I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to using Linux. I usually use Windows for e

Question

I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to using Linux. I usually use Windows for everything but I do currently have a machine running Ubuntu that I would like be to able to administer/occasionally use remotely using some kind of graphical remote desktop software.

I currently use vino as a VNC server on this machine however I find that this is slow, uses up a relatively large amount of CPU time on the host and it requires additional software to be installed on any computer that I use to access that machine.

If possible, I would like something compatible with Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol so I can use MSTSC, which is available on pretty much any machine I currently use (whether at work, at home or at a friend's house) without the need for the installation of more software.

It should be easy to install (or instructs on installation provided) due to my casual user status with Linux.

Explanation / Answer

From the Linux side, it is easy to run a Linux application on one machine and have it display on another machine. Linux's graphical interface is based on the X Window System (a.k.a. X11), which is network-transparent: applications send commands to the display subsystem, and these commands can be sent over the network.

The de facto standard for executing commands remotely on Linux is SSH.

All of this works out of the box on Linux, as long as the remote machine you try to reach has a public IP address (i.e. not behind a NAT). On the command line, you just run ssh darkstar myapp and myapp is executed on darkstar and displayed locally. (Depending on the configuration, you may have to run ssh -X darkstar myapp to activate

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