Ubuntu Unity + headless desktop sharing - vnc

I am running Ubuntu Server 16.04 on the Google Compute Engine and I want to install Unity 7.4 desktop over it and connect to it with Google Remote Desktop.
It is my development machine (headless desktop), not a standalone server which needs to be minimal. As I work on the go, I am used to work remotely in the cloud. There is no problem with hardware as I can increase the RAM, CPU or HDD as needed.
After I install ubuntu-desktop package I am not able to connect SSH port 22 to my compute engine instance anymore and I lost control completely and have to recreate new instance.
There is no headless Google Remote Desktop installer, so basically I have to install temporary VNC to install Chrome, then configure the Chrome RDP headless service to run on system startup, delete the temporary VNC connection and after that I should be able to connect there anytime with my Chrome client on the go.
I have following questions:
Is Unity able to work with VNC? I have found only tutorials for XFCE and similar lightweight desktops.
Is Unity able to work with Google RDP?
What about performance? There is no 3D graphics card in Google Cloud
I have LTE on the go, so network should be no problem.
if impossible to run Unity remotely, which lightweight desktop is closest to it? (I am quite a Mac fan)

Related

Linux application over RDP (FreeRDP, XRDP) / Apache Guacamole

I have started lately using Apache Guacamole.
The problem I am facing is that I want to find a way to have Linux Remote Applications over RDP ( as windows RemoteApp does).
Is there any way to have just a single Linux application using xrdp or freerdp?
I have tried the initial_program option but this brings the whole desktop with the application running.
If none of them works is there any other way?
As far as I understand, in Guacamole, only via RDP there might be a chance to bring a single Linux app. Neither VNC nor SSH can be used for that purpose.

Using XRDP to connect linux to Windows PC from LINUX Client

Has anyone successfully used XRDP/freeRDP to remote login to a Windows PC from a LINUX Client? I did some research on the matter and I found there may be incompatibility issues. However those posts were quite old.
I would like to use the latest XRDP or freeRDP
The site says the following:
"The goal of this project is to provide a fully functional Linux terminal server, capable of accepting connections from rdesktop, freerdp, and Microsoft's own terminal server / remote desktop clients.
Unlike Windows NT/2000/2003/2008/2012 server, xrdp will not display a Windows desktop but an X window desktop to the user.
So it sounds like I can communicate between a Linux Box and Windows. But it sounds like the Windows PC can only be the client logging into a Linux Server and not vice-versa."
Is this true?
That's not true. You can using a freeRDP client in Linux connecting to a server on Windows. I've just tried the latest freeRDP code in Ubuntu, and I've tested Win7/Win10, both are OK.
Follow the instruction of freeRDP in the following link:
https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/wiki/Compilation
and hope you make it.
Ps: There may be some connectivity issues, like firewall or something, just google it.

Can we access WebGL through Virtual machine

AFAIK, WebGL require graphics card and VM doesn't have one. So is there any way we can open a webpage having 3D content using Virtual machine.
I want a virtual machine with a Chrome browser and want to use that VM to see WebGL samples, as I don't have direct internet access in my workstation.
Hope I phrased my question correctly.
Chrome will run with software based OSMesa. Unfortunately you'd have to build OSMesa for your OS then run Chrome with --use-gl=osmesa. The Chromium source has a target for OSMesa which is/was used to be able to run various tests on VMs in the cloud.

amazon web service -EC2 linux vm has no graphics card or shared graphics

I am not sure if amazon simply does not offer graphics for linux vm instances or if its to do with configuration. But i recently setup a linux node on ec2 and i tried to setup rdp. I kept getting a blank screen but after much trial and error, went with bizspark and setup a linux node and to my surprise I see the bizspark linux node comes with a vga graphics card! while the amazon one does not!
Without a vga graphics card or builtin chipset its not possible to rdp in the linux node.
So does amazon offer graphics card on linux vms or is it a simply a matter of configuration ?
edit:
It is possible to have rdp even without a graphic card apparently. What I found out is one can install X2GO server on their ubuntu server and then just get the x2go client. No need for rdp.
If you'd like to get RDP working on EC2, take a look here:
http://michaelhallsmoore.com/blog/Desktop-Ubuntu-in-Amazon-EC2-The-Right-Way
or
http://activeintelligence.org/blog/archive/remote-graphical-linux-desktop-on-ec2/
You don't actually need a video card.

How Can I connect to Amazon Linux instance using Remote Desktop from Windows 7?

I created an EC2 Amazon Linux instance (yes, an amazon version of linux..)
it is launched but I can't connect using Remote Desktop...
am I trying to do something crazy here?
I got a message that Remote Computer is not available on the network
If you mean Windows RDP (Remote Desktop) that is your problem. Most likely you will need to use an SSH client to connect. I suggest Putty.
You should've received an SSH key when you setup your server. You will need to convert that key using PuttyGEN (same page as the Putty download) to convert it then use it with Putty to access the server.
Trying to walk you through the process of installing a GUI and VNC on the server is a bit much for here but give this video a shot. It seems pretty thorough and from skipping through it I saw no obvious errors in his process.
Try installing the vnc4server package. Then you can use a client such as TightVNC to connect from a Windows machine. You'll also need to open up port number 5900 in your firewall, which is the default for VNC.
You'll also have to have a desktop environment installed on your EC2 instance - by default you may only have the server packages which will not give you a GUI.
For your information, some folks posted remote desktop conf for EC2 instances.
http://activeintelligence.org/blog/archive/remote-graphical-linux-desktop-on-ec2/

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