Remote Desktop Under Linux

Thu Dec 31 22:35:35 UTC 2020

Tim here.  There are multiple ways to do remote access of which
Remote Desktop (RDP) is only one of them.  I've never tried to use
RDP to serve my Linux/BSD machines' GUI to another (Windows or
otherwise) machine.  However, I can confirm that if you're sitting at
the Linux/BSD machine, you can use RDP to access a remote Windows
machine.  However, accessibility may vary if you need access to
underlying accessibility data that a screen-reader might use.

For accessing a Linux/BSD machine's GUI from another machine, the two
most common ways I've encountered are to use VNC or to forward the X
protocol.  For the former, you'd install something like the
"tightvncserver" package on the Linux machine and install a VNC
viewer on your local machine.  You can then connect to it from your
local machine.  Note that this might leave your VNC/GUI login prompt
up for others to hammer on, so I'd either enable it via SSH manually
as-needed, or set up a secure tunnel (either a SSH tunnel or a VPN
tunnel) to the machine and ensure that VNC only listens on localhost.

In a similar fashion, if you have a local X server, you can use ssh's
"-X" parameter tunnel to the remote machine and open windows on your
local machine desktop. For example, issuing

  local$ ssh -X user at remote.example.com

creates a virtual X connection on the remote server, and then when
SSH'ed into that machine, I can launch programs there that display
locally such as:

  user at remote$ xcalc

Again, accessibility for either of them may be limited to the
graphics, so a screen-reader might face difficulty.  But a
screen-magnifier should still be of assistance.

Hope this helps,

-tim

On December 31, 2020, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>  
> 
> I have my ssh access and local GUI desktop working for my Linux
> machine quite well.  I also have ssh access to a Linux machine on
> the Microsoft Azure service working.
> 
>  
> 
> Before I go down the path of trying to get remote desktop access to
> the GUI, does this actually work.
> 
>  
> 
> The article at Linux - Microsoft Azure
> <https://portal.azure.com/#@kellykellford.onmicrosoft.com/resource/subscript
> ions/968d4c66-18eb-48df-87b5-6d1918a03749/resourceGroups/linux/providers/Mic
> rosoft.Compute/virtualMachines/linux/connect>  has details on what
> you need to do to connect to the GUI for a machine running on
> Azure.  I am hoping to use the Windows RDP client to connect and
> just get the Gnome audio.  I know it won't be perfect.
> 
>  
> 
> If this does actually work, does anyone know the syntax to tell the
> XRDP service on the Linux machine to use Gnome as the desktop
> session?  The article shows this command but it is for a different
> desktop.
> 
>  
> 
> Tell xrdp what desktop environment to use when you start your
> session. Configure xrdp to use xfce as your desktop environment as
> follows:
> 
>  
> 
> echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession
> 
> Restart the xrdp service for the changes to take effect as follows:
> 
> sudo service xrdp restart
> 
>  
> 
> Also, thanks for the answers to my other questions here.  I haven't
> contributed much here but will offer one tidbit, on the off chance
> anyone here is trying to use Microsoft Teams on Linux.  You have to
> start the Linux version of Teams with the additional command line of
> -force-renderer-accessibility.  This instructs Chrome and software
> using Chromium, to ensure things go through the accessibility API.
> If you don't, Orca won't read anything when Teams loads.  If you do
> add this, Teams works fairly similar to how it does on other
> platforms.
> 
>  
> 
> I know I do not post here often so in full disclosure, my day job
> is working for Microsoft running  a service known as the enterprise
> Disability Answer Desk that works to resolve accessibility issues
> for business, government, education and other enterprise customers.
>  I've wanted to understand how our technology works on Linux, where
> we have it available.
> 
>  
> 
> Kelly
> 
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