[sspiff]

I use my Linux desktop through VNC roughly 50% of the time I'm using it (though, honestly, most of the time I work locally on my laptop).

It's convenient to have access to the desktop session I left running the night before remotely if I want to. I mostly use it to sync files/code I forgot to upload when I quit the last time, or to start a download on Steam or something like that.

I'm sure Wayland will eventually support similar usage, but I understand you reluctance to adopt it until it does.

[bandrami]

Yeah, but VNC is light years behind X11-over-network in so many ways. You have to have a full desktop instead of a single application. It's not integrated with your selection buffers or your session manager or your desktop. It's really a blunt object in comparison to X.

[newscracker]

Which VNC server program do you use? Is it free (as in beer) and does it have a GUI for enabling/disabling and managing the configuration? Several months ago I was looking for one like that but didn’t find anything that was maintained in the recent times. Coming from OS X, where turning on VNC/screen sharing is a simple process in System Preferences, I found it surprising that it was difficult to do that on (Ubuntu) Linux (enabling file sharing with Samba also took a bit of fiddling around).

[shakna]

rdesktop is pretty easy to drop-in and use, with a nice GUI. They focus on Windows remote desktop compatibility instead of VNC, which can make it easier for some.