Big screen VNC from a small netbook

Netbooks are great, but sometimes 600 vertical pixels isn't enough.

Ubuntu includes screen sharing but it's just a mirror of the small screen, so here's a tip to serve up a vnc desktop for use on a larger screen client computer (I use MacOS X's built in VNC client).

Here's how it looks:



To do this, at least on Ubuntu 10.04, but probably the same on earlier versions:

• aptitude install tightvncserver
• run vncserver once so it creates a .vnc directory in your home

edit ~/.vnc/xstartup like this:

#!/bin/sh
export XKL_XMODMAP_DISABLE=1
xsetroot -solid black
gnome-session &

• Start the server like this:

vncserver -geometry 1500x1100 -depth 16

• Connect with your VNC client, on my mac it's vnc://10.0.1.198:5901
• Stop the server like this

vncserver -kill :1

Obviously adjust the geometry XxY pixels above according to the size of your client screen.

All credit to this thread on the Ubuntu forums.

I think it would be a great feature if Ubuntu had a headless mode that would share a vnc screen without the need to run a gnome session on the physical laptop. One issue is that there is no wireless connection until you log in.