Remote Desktop

[TheFu]

You have to have an X/Windows server running on the machine you sit behind. That server needs to be sufficiently good to support standard X11. I've only seen commercial X/Servers on MS-Windows work. Honestly, I haven't used MS-Windows for remote X since around 2002, so my knowledge on this is mucho out-of-date.

For my needs, it was easier to install/cheaper a hypervisor like virtualbox into MS-Windows, then run a small Linux VM with a GUI - like the 23MB TinyCore Linux, then use that as the X/Server for remote access into other Unix systems. Since it used the real Linux X/Server, compatibility wasn't an issue. Since it is 23MB in size, it needs very little RAM assigned to the VM and is crazy fast. http://tinycorelinux.net/downloads.html OTOH, TinyCore Linux is a bit odd and not exactly friendly to end users. It is the basis for many specialized devices that have 1 purpose. In this case, you'd use it as an X/Server and only as an X/Server.

The X11Forwarding settings is the default in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on Ubuntu.

MS-Windows implementation of ssh is lacking, BTW. I have no experience trying to get ssh -X working on it. I do know that Putty uses an odd version of ssh-keys, so if that might be the plan, I can't help. I have used PuTTY to remotely start GUI programs after starting a local X/Server. Doing this means it would not use the ssh tunnel AND we have to manually set the DISPLAY environment variably AND we have to open any firewalls to allow the X/Clients to connect the X/Server. Using a proper ssh -X implementation avoids the DISPLAY environment variable - as ssh does that automatically.

The Win10+ ssh implementation doesn't provide the ssh-copy-id tool, which makes ssh-key exchange harder. You'll want to do that manually and be careful like we had to be in the mid-1990s. Copy the public key to the correct file on the remote system and be certain to ensure the file and directory permissions aren't molested. ssh is picky about file permissions. It only took MSFT 20 yrs to make ssh port for MS-Windows. Hopefully, they will take less time to add ssh-copy-id quicker. It is the easiest way to exchange the ssh key from the ssh-client to the ssh-server.
Https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread....6#post13916386 Run 2 commands. That's it - at least on Linux.

I run thunderbird with this exact line:

TB_OPTS="-no-remote "  /usr/bin/ssh -X  deneb /usr/bin/firejail $FJ_OPTS /usr/bin/thunderbird $TB_OPTS $@ &

However, I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to computers and do some security things.

The basic line would be:

/usr/bin/ssh -X  deneb   /usr/bin/thunderbird    -no-remote  $@ &

"deneb" is remote system.
My username is the same on both sides, so it isn't needed.

This is part of a script, so I use the full path to every program for added safety. As /usr/bin/ is in the PATH on both systems, if you trust the PATH being correct (I don't in scripts) AND you don't want to pass any arguments into Thunderbird, then you could use

ssh -X  deneb   thunderbird   -no-remote &

I almost forgot - Mozilla tries to run their programs locally even when we use ssh, so we have to add the no-remote option.

[ActionParsnip]

ActionParsnip:

I'd like to run Firefox, Thunderbird, and Fragments on the remote 24.04 computer via my Windows 10 workstation.

VcXsrv on Windows 10 triggers Windows Defender according to some, not too far back: https://github.com/marchaesen/vcxsrv/discussions/27

If you want a Web browser, you can setup an SSH tunnel then set your local we browser to use the tunnel as a proxy.
Thunderbird is trickier but if you can mount the remote file system via SFTP/SSHFS then you can point a locally installed Thunderbird to the mounted data and read it. I don't know what "Fragments" is, can you expand please

[TheFu]

ActionParsnip:

I'd like to run Firefox, Thunderbird, and Fragments on the remote 24.04 computer via my Windows 10 workstation.

VcXsrv on Windows 10 triggers Windows Defender according to some, not too far back: https://github.com/marchaesen/vcxsrv/discussions/27

I think you'll find that trying to run Firefox and Thunderbird remotely may not work. They are shipped as snap packages in Ubuntu 24.04, which include some mandated constraints. I run a Linux Mint VM just for this reason. Mint doesn't use any Snaps.

[ds526]

I had not considered those limitations of Snaps, so that's good to know. I started playing around with TinyCore and will see if I can run those apps headless through another type of remote environment or just stay on an older LTS. Thanks for these recommendations! There are many ways to skin this cat.

[TheFu]

I had not considered those limitations of Snaps, so that's good to know. I started playing around with TinyCore and will see if I can run those apps headless through another type of remote environment or just stay on an older LTS. Thanks for these recommendations! There are many ways to skin this cat.

Yep. There usually are 50 different possible solutions to any problem. The trick is to consider all of them quickly and see if they are excellent or terrible as quickly as possible, so you don't waste too much time on dead-end solutions. I've considered RDP and VNC as dead-end solutions for nearly 15 yrs now. NX was the go-to when I traveled and needed to leave everything in a safe place. With Xorg slowly going away, NX-based remote desktops will die. That means using alternative remote access methods like ssh -X or using ssh as a SOCKS proxy will be more common. I've been using ssh as a SOCKS proxy for some time when traveling in non-authoritarian countries and I wasn't worried about having any local data or cached information. In those other places of the work, I travel with everything on a microSD card, no HDD inside the laptop and a few USB flash drives. 1 to show the computer works and 1 that is what I really use for remote access. Not everyone has the same level of security needs. Also, some "free" countries really aren't as free as they may seem. Even in Europe and Oceania some freedoms I consider very important don't exist. Of course in parts of Asia and the Middle East, travel can have all sorts of challenges for computer security. For the most part, I've not been hassled, but when you see some censorship as mandated by the govt in those places, it can make you think. In one country, some of my websites were blocked for wired internet connections, but their cell phone networks didn't block them. Odd.

And to be very clear, there are ways to run Firefox and Thunderbird remotely even as snap packages, but they aren't noob-friendly. Canonical isn't trying to make Ubuntu point-n-click for all possible use cases. They are trying to make it easy for the most common uses ... which is 1 computer = 1 person = 1 desktop. It makes sense, right?

OTOH, for people with knowledge and who are stubborn, it is possible to bend Ubuntu to your needs (for most things). I did that for years, but about 18 months ago, I decided I shouldn't need to fight against the desktop so much to have it do things I want and there was a distro that already did things the way I wanted that was very, very, similar to what Ubuntu does. Why not use it? In some ways, Linux Mint is really dumbed down. But in many other ways, it doesn't get in the way and allows the user to control how things work. I don't know if it is the default or not, but Mint uses Xorg still, not Wayland. Also, they don't load any snap packages or expect people to use snaps. The Mint team has decided to package the most popular snap-only programs for their releases, so end-users don't need to change anything.

But let's be very, very clear. Ubuntu does 20,000 really well and just because I find less than 20 things that I don't like, that doesn't mean they aren't helping the vast numbers of Ubuntu users. I'm struggling on my next server OS choice now. Mostly I have Ubuntu 20.04 servers and standard support for them ends next June, so I will need to replace 2 of my physical server OSes and a number of virtual machine OSes before that time. The VMs aren't really much concern. I can wipe and restore those all day without worry.

Mint isn't appropriate for Servers, so that's out. Ubuntu 24.04 isn't solid enough yet, from what I've read and in my 24.04 desktop testing, things didn't really turn out well. I want a basic Server OS with support for KVM/QEMU+libvirt and LXD/LXC containers, but that doesn't require snap packages. Of course, I use lots of other server stuff on my systems, but those items will run fine under either server or desktop distributions. I don't plan on moving to any non-APT OS, so that leaves Debian. I've been playing with Debian 12 on a few systems with mixed results. One install, I was unable to get any networking up. Not good. I need to try again - perhaps that is solved or I'm smarter (doubtful, I'm an old dog).

Yep, need to try the current debian again.