src/chapters/home-desktop.xml

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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>