For those who have used TightVNC, could you offer a comparison to RealVNC (Free, Personal, or Enterprise Editions)?
Someone in a recent post suggested TightVNC as an alternative to RealVNC. This was the first I'd heard of TightVNC so I checked it out on their web site to see if it would be a viable alternative. After looking over the site I was impressed by the list of features, many of which are available in the paid versions of RealVNC. However, there was some information missing or vague and no one on the TightVNC mailing list has yet answered my questions. TightVNC might be great for some folks, but it may not be compatible with our RHEL 4 (soon RHEL 5) and Fedora Core 5 (soon Core 6) platforms with the latest Xorg X11 X-Windows. If I'm going to consider switching I want to be sure that I'm not going to loose any of our existing functionality. RealVNC has been very reliable and low maintenance in terms of upgrades. I don't want to trade that for something requiring constant attention. Here are 3 key issues I posted on the TightVNC list. Maybe some of you can shed light on them. =================[Any 2.6 Linux Kernels?]================= I've been looking over the web site and have not seen any mention of Linux distributions using the 2.6 kernels. I've seen RHL 7.x and Fedora Core 3, both of which are unsupported. There will be no further development on RHL 7.x, 8 and 9 or Fedora Core 1 and 2 by year's end (http://www.fedoralegacy.org/). Fedora Core 3 legacy support will likely end next year. I'm curious why even development versions of TightVNC are being built for an already obsolete distribution? Are there problems building or running on the 2.6 kernels? More importantly, are there any issues running TightVNC with the latest open source X servers (RHEL 4 uses xorg-x11-6.8.2-1.EL.13.37)? I like some of the TightVNC features missing from Free RealVNC, but I'm a little skeptical about compatibility and/or usabilty on the latest RHEL and Fedora platforms. Fedora Core 6 is scheduled for release on 9 Oct this year. RHEL 5 is due for release in December. What are the development team's plans in terms of Linux server/client platforms? =================[/Any 2.6 Linux Kernels?]================= This next one is a big deal for our sites. Remoting the local display keeps me from traveling to each building and allows local administrators to follow or join-in what I'm doing at the Linux consoles. Having multiple, private, concurrent connections at selectable resolution and color depths allows developers full, unshared, sessions in which to work. ===============[Native and Virtual Displays]=============== I've got VNC 4.1.2-1 installed on all of our Linux and Windows machines. The Linux machines are setup to run the native X server (:0) with the "vnc.so" module installed and configured in the Xorg.conf file. They also run "Xvnc" services out of xinetd for 8 different geometry/color depth combinations. Each of these services supports multiple client connections. 1. I don't see any "vnc.so" module in the tightvnc-server RPM. Does TighVNC not support remote native X display? In other words, can I connect to display :0 on a server and control the local console remotely? 2. Am I likely to have problems with my multiple vnc services if I switch to TightVNC? I'm using XDM (GDM) for these. Here is an excerpt representing one of the high-resolution virtual displays from my RHEL 4 /etc/xinetd.d/vnc file (watch for line-wrap in your message). ----------------------------------------------------- ## [73] Color Depth: 24-bit Geometry: 1280x1024 service vnc1280x1024x24 { flags = REUSE protocol = tcp socket_type = stream wait = no user = nobody server = /usr/bin/Xvnc server_args = -inetd -query localhost -once -geometry 1280x1024 -depth 24 -securitytypes=none disable = no } ----------------------------------------------------- ===============[/Native and Virtual Displays]=============== ===============[RealVNC -> TightVNC Versions]=============== The main TightVNC home page says the it is "derived from the popular VNC software. Is this a forked development effort or does it track directly with RealVNC releases? Is there a way to correlate the RealVNC version upon which a TightVNC release is based? What is the typical delay between a RealVNC release and an update to TightVNC? ===============[/RealVNC -> TightVNC Versions]=============== --Cal Webster _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list VNC-List@realvnc.com To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
