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| <chapter xml:id="home-desktop" |
| xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0" xml:lang="en" |
| xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"> |
| |
| <title>Accessing computers at home</title> |
| <para>The main purpose of Guacamole is to provide access to your computers |
| from anywhere. As such, it can definitely be installed on a home |
| computer, and from there can provide access to any of the computers on |
| your network, including the computer it is installed on.</para> |
| <para>If you already have a Linux desktop or server at home, installing |
| Guacamole and serving computers on your network is not a complex |
| task.</para> |
| <para>If you do not have any Linux computers, you will need to install Linux |
| somehow, whether that be on a spare computer, on a virtual machine using |
| software like VirtualBox or VMWare, or on an existing computer in a |
| dual-boot arrangement. If you have never used Linux before, there will |
| be a bit of a learning curve, but it's well worth it.</para> |
| <para>Another possibility for those without Linux computers is to leverage |
| an online computing service like EC2, using a compute instance from such |
| a service to serve Guacamole and allow yourself or others access to |
| computers in your household. This is discussed later.</para> |
| <section xml:id="vnc-vs-rdp"> |
| <title>VNC or RDP</title> |
| <para>Guacamole currently supports the VNC and RDP protocols, each of |
| which having advantages and disadvantages. Other protocols such as |
| SSH and SPICE are under development, but your stable options for the |
| time being are VNC and RDP.</para> |
| <para>VNC has a bad reputation for being slow, but it can actually be |
| quite fast depending on the VNC server used. It wins over RDP in its |
| ubiquity, as a VNC server can be found on almost any |
| platform.</para> |
| <para>RDP is the protocol used by Windows Remote Desktop, and is |
| proprietary. Because of its proprietary nature, RDP servers are not |
| as widespread, though open-source alternatives do exist. The RDP |
| protocol is usually faster than VNC because it makes use of caching |
| and off-screen rendering. As Guacamole also supports caching and |
| off-screen rendering, it can take advantage of these |
| features.</para> |
| <para>Certain features of Guacamole like audio are only provided by RDP |
| as VNC has no such support.</para> |
| </section> |
| <section> |
| <title>Installing a VNC server</title> |
| <para>Choice of VNC server is important if you want adequate |
| performance. The default VNC server included in your distribution or |
| desktop environment may not be reasonably fast. If the computer you |
| intend to serve is a virtual machine whose display is provided by |
| VNC, it may not perform well because such a VNC server cannot be |
| aware of the same things as a VNC server running on the machine |
| itself, such as the existence of windows and the movement of windows |
| and their contents.</para> |
| <para>In general, we recommend installing either the open-source version |
| of Real VNC, or Tiger VNC, depending on what is available from your |
| distribution's repositories. If you need to be able to access your |
| computer locally while simultaneously having that same display |
| available over the network via VNC, a VNC server that attaches to an |
| existing display like x11vnc is what you're looking for.</para> |
| <section> |
| <title>VNC on Debian and Ubuntu</title> |
| <para/> |
| </section> |
| <section> |
| <title>VNC on Fedora</title> |
| <para/> |
| </section> |
| </section> |
| <section> |
| <title>Installing Guacamole</title> |
| <para/> |
| </section> |
| <section> |
| <title>Accessing Guacamole remotely</title> |
| <para/> |
| </section> |
| |
| </chapter> |