I just go a nice shiny new Mac Mini today to use as a testing machine.
To make my life easy I want to be able to connect to it remotely from my Ubuntu (Gutsy 7.10) laptop. Luckily with Leopard's new screen sharing and a bit of googling it's easy to connect both ways.
Ubuntu to OS X
The Apple screen sharing uses a version of VNC - but the default VNC client on Ubuntu won't work with it - however thanks to this post I discovered the xtightvncviewer will work.
You need to configure your Mac to allow it with the following settings:
- Open "System Preferences"
- Select "Sharing"
- Ensure "Screen Sharing" is on
- Select "Computer Settings" on the Screen sharing page
- Tick both boxes - "Anyone my request..." and "VNC viewers may control..." and add a password.
Note the address of your machine also - eg: vnc://192.168.0.55 or similar
Then over to the ubuntu machine and install xtightvncviewer:
$ sudo apt-get install xtightvncviewer
Then connect to the machine with: (change the ip address as relevant)
$ xtightvncviewer 192.168.0.55
You will then get a prompt - enter the password and you should be good to go.
OS X to Ubuntu
Once I had that working I was keen to see if I could get it working the other way:
You need to enable remote desktop sharing in Ubuntu:
- Select "System->Preferences->Remote Desktop" from the menu
- Tick the following boxes: "Allow others to view...", "Allow others to control...", and "Require ... password" and enter a password.
Then open up safari and type in the the address of you Ubuntu machine with vnc:// in front of it. eg:
It will give a warning about the vnc server not supporting "Keystroke encryption" but it will work (albeit not as securely as a Mac to Mac connection) - but good enough for your local network.
That's it - I did notice that it also showed up in Finder->Shared which I presume it found via Avahi/Bonjour - which is nice.
Hope it helps. Cheers, Mark