ThinLinc Overview and Tutorial - How to Install and Utilize this Linux Remote Desktop Solution
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- Recently, I decided to check out ThinLinc - a remote desktop solution for Linux. With client apps for Linux, macOS and Windows - it's easy to set up and configure. In this tutorial, I'll give you an overview of the solution and walk you through the process of setting it up. Please note that this is a tutorial, and NOT a review.
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Video Specific Links
- Official blog post for this video: ➜ www.learnlinux.tv/?p=2389
- ThinLinc client downloads for Linux/Windows/macOS ➜ cendio.com/thinlinc/download
- ThinLinc server bundle download ➜ www.cendio.com/thinlinc/downl...
Note: LearnLinuxTV receives zero commission for any of the links that are specific to Cendio and/or ThinLinc. They're provided here for your convenience only.
-- Individual Sections --
00:00 - Intro
00:23 - Brief summary of ThinLinc and the goal that it solves
02:15 - An overview of the ThinLinc client, connection options, and connecting to a server
06:12 - Example of connecting to an Ubuntu desktop install via ThinLinc
07:54 - How does licensing work with ThinLinc?
09:08 - Installing ThinLinc on a Linux Server
15:15 - Installing the ThinLinc client (on a Linux workstation)
20:24 - Installing the ThinLinc client (on a Linux workstation using the tarball method)
23:06 - Installing the ThinLinc client (on a Windows workstation)
24:01 - Installing the ThinLinc client (on a Mac)
25:42 - Setting up a terminal server to use with ThinLinc
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#Linux #RemoteDesktop #RemoteAccess - Наука та технологія
I bought your Ubuntu server book the other day, love it! Definitely what I needed to study for sysadmin. Thanx 🤙
A great solution and as always well presented. Thank you, Jay 💪
Thanks, Jay you're a wealth of knowledge and we all deeply appreciate your efforts and passion.
As usual your video is truly clear and helpful. Thank you very much.
THX Jay for your awesome Content. I Just love your videos, and i´m looking forward for some more videos from you!
Keep up ! 😀
Interesting. I've been using NoMachine because it's free for non-commercial use, has very little lag and is cross platform. Love it
I use noVNC on Proxmox. It sounds like noMachine is almost the same.
I also use NoMachine and the performance is fantastic. Mac, Linux, Windows and Raspberry Pi, all work great!
Nomachine is the best, after having tried various options such as Teamviewer, VNC, and RDP.
I've heard good things about NICE DCV also.
This is really great . Ive always wanted to configure something' like this . thanks for Sharing this
Great video!👍
Really great video. If running this as a daily solution. Remember to check and change PolKit policies so allow_any session get the same values as allow_active session. Otherwise authentication windows will bore you to tears when for example using software updates and Flatpak installations in the virtual desktop. You get the job done, but you need to athenticate between 3 - 15 times dependent on the installation package.
Finally someone recognize this app.
superb thing, used it for years.
Tiny and fast
Did you get sound working on Firefox?
@@christian_oz Can't remember and as my server is down (due to outdated drivers and no one patches them anymore which I could do that) so I can't test either.
I think everything worked though.
@@AliensInc. what OS did you install it on?
At that time I had CentOS 7.
I needed to upgrade to newer as the filesystem couldn't handle 64bit inodes, had to find a source, compile it and it worked but this led me to think that I needed an upgrade and this time to RockyLinux but that kernel version stopped my advancement and is now just dead... with 20Tb of data 🥵
@@AliensInc. I tried Ubuntu 20.04 and it works fine, so it seems the issue is with Ubuntu 22.04
Cool product, pricing is A bit steep especially when you have things like X2Go availble! WOuld be interested to see the differences.
I installed the server component on a Linux Mint machine and the client on an Ubuntu 20.04 machine. When I started the client the connection box was so small I couldn't read it. I literally had to get within 6" of the monitor to read it. So I put the IP, user, and password only for it to take me to a "start" page that, again, was so small I couldn't read it. After getting up close to the monitor, I clicked the "start" button and the window closed. Yeah, GREAT product. Now I get to figure out how to uninstall it! Your video was fantastic and made the product look first class, but in reality, well not so much.
I have this same problem. Have been trying to solve it for ages now. Jay, you mention the scaling issue in the video, but never how to solve it. Please help! Other than this, it seems great.
@cendioaaron
I'm doing the exact same thing, Mint server/Ubuntu client. Waste of time. I hope I didn't screw up my Mint with all that software.
Thanks for your great content! Did you test NoMachine, how is it compared ?
Thank you kind man.
A great alternative to ThiccLinc
i am new to the program it is good
This looks very interesting!
Can you do a Compare/Contrast of Thinlinc to X2Go?
Thank you for bringing this up! I was using xrdp to connect to my Fedora system from my Windows 10 machine. It is very easy to install and the logon process is fast. But: The session has a very ugly lag and moving stuff in the session around is not going smoothly, which is very annoying. So I hoped ThinLic is a better solution. The answer is: Yes! But: The installation and configuration was not as easy as you showed. At first, the annoying welcome screen should be disabled in the webadmin page under Profiles - Introduction Texts (disable "Yes, show introduction"). Then, I was not able to establish a connection, because even though I am using a KDE Plasma desktop, it is not recognized by ThinLic. I always received an error message that said "no executable profiles could be found". The solution was to open the /opt/thinlinc/etc/conf.d/profiles.hconf file, go to the [/profiles/kde] section and adding plasmax11 to xdg_session entry. After that, it looks like this:
xdg_session=kde kde-plasma plasma kde4 1-kde-plasma-standard plasmax11
It took a while to figure that out, but now it runs fine.
Is this like a a server/client architect Linux build out for a computer lab?
Around 17:54 .. it's also in the AUR, just checked. ☺
Jay something I found out why many new wifi cards are suddenly not working is the hashtags are not matching! The one that does work is Intel! Throwing away a card is not a good idea! It may work in another machine such as I switched cards where neither worked and I run Arch, so I have options to it use aur also!
I prefer the KDE Plasma Desktop, also lightweight and highly configurable!
Curious where someone would drop the SSL cert files appropriately in the server web administration system.
This could be a bit redundant question for this video but... Would it be worth it to switch from RealVNC to Thinlinc? I have the free home subscription that support up to 5 machines for RealVNC. But if Thinlinc is faster, then no reason to not to jump.
Questions. Does Thinlink allow you to log into a remote Linux machine if that machine is only at the login screen? I am currently using X11vnc for this, but am looking for options that work on Wayland.
Hi Adam, currently ThinLinc only supports X11 desktops. Being a terminal server solution, there is no support out of the box for connecting to the local console ("display :0"). However, as you mentioned, ThinLinc could be combined with something like x11vnc for this purpose.
@@cendioaaron Except that would leave the local desktop unlocked and vulnerable to any passer-by who wanted to hijack control away from the remote user. Not a great solution if you need, you know, security.
@@BandanazX Thinlinc ships with its own X Server (Xvnc) and will not touch any local running X. So, yes, thinlinc will allow you to login remotely to a machine only at login screen
You said you can use it over the internet but did not show if you need to open ports or do port forwarding to connect from outside.
Thinlinc tunnels everything over ssh, so thats the only port that needs to be open between the Thinlinc client and server
Iv'e been using tigervnc over openvpn (for encryption, and access to the local network) to remote into computers i need access to. Using the LXQT desktop and some tweaks to openvpn for speed. Yes i know its probably overkill, but it is entirely within my control, no 3rd parties needed. NOTE: most vnc solutions are NOT encrypted by default. If you use a vnc solution ,please enable encryption.
Does encryption really matter? I’m asking becuz I’ve never really acted as a threat actor and don’t understand the vulnerabilities associated with not using encryption or VPNS. Why do I need a VPN? Does it really matter? I know it’s useful for protecting against DDoS attacks but I feel like using a VPN just exposes your home network to threats that are currently on the virtual network. Right?
Please do respond, as I am curious what your opinion is on this topic. Thanks
Another half-baked remote desktop for Linux.
I need to be able to access my Linux system's locked local desktop session remotely, with all my applications that are currently running. (No logoff, no terminal server)
RDP on Windows does this wonderfully, but somehow after 20+ years no equivalent solution exists on Linux.
Sounds like your want x0vncserver from TigerVNC
why use thinlinc over the novnc of proxmox?
ease of use for less savvy users?
Not quite sure if Im using Proxmox ve why would I use or need Thinlinc ?
I installed ThinLinc server on Ubuntu 22.04.2 but when I tried to run a ThinLInc remote session with this computer I could not open any applications on Ubuntu that had been installed with snap. This rendered this VNC solution unusable for me. This error seems to have been around for some time and does not have anyone assigned to fix it so I will continue to use RDP as my preferred remote desktop solution with Ubuntu.
If I remote into a Linux machine which had a number of applications running 24/7, will I see them or a completely new desktop (like a new session)?
My Linux machine is downloading and storing weather satellite images for me to view via Apache2, every now and again I just want to remote in and check all is running correctly.
You will get the same desktop with all your applications still running. As long as you choose to disconnect from the session rather than log out. Also, if the server is rebooted you will (of course) get a new session
What should I do to make bootable usb...I have the .iso images but I don't have internet how can I use terminal to accomplish this goal?
You can use dd but be VERY CAREFUL to select the right device. “Sudo dd if= of= status=progress”. Replace the path to iso with your image and device path with what matches from running lsblk such as /dev/sdb
Does this share the same session as my desktop, or create a new one?
Somebody else sees the elephant in the room. No, you cannot take control of your local desktop and pick up remotely where you left off.
Three years ago, I made the mistake of purchasing a computer that has Windows 10 Home. That version has Remote Desktop server disabled.
I am not prepared to spend $200 (or whatever Microsoft charges) for the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro (which has Remote Desktop enabled).
I watched this video, hoping to see a server version for Windows -- but saw none.
Was it overlooked by our host? He did not state that it was not available.
Also, the demonstrations our host provided shows "new" sessions, created by logging in.
What about connecting to an existing session that is running on the remote computer?
Windows Remote Desktop brings you into an existing session. Does TinLinc do that? Or when you connect to your remote machine, are you creating a new session that runs alongside of any existing login that you already have on your remote machine?
Thinlinc will not log you in to a session that is running on the local graphical console on the server. However, if you disconnect from a thinlinc session it will keep being available for you to reconnect to
@9:26 - so, no server version for windows ????
Psst. RDP is built into Windows Server and it smokes ThiccLink.
Is there a way to uninstall it? I tried to install it and the PC I tried to install the server on went to sleep during installation and interrupted the SSH session so I wasn't able to complete it. Now when I try to run the install script it says it's installed even after I deleted the files in the opt folder. I'm trying to figure out what it's looking for to say it's installed and the variables in the python script are non-sensical.
Using your systems package manager to install. I.e, apt remove thinlinc-* or dnf remove thinlinc-*
No server for armv8? O.o
tried setting this up and it keeps telling me my username and password is wrong even though i used admin and the password i set up. its frustrating.
The admin/password credentials are for the webadministration. Use your Linux user credentials to login with the thinlinc client
I can't get audio to work neither on Firefox nor Chromium. Does anyone have a similar issue?
The browser-based client does not currently have feature parity with the native client, including audio support. Try the native client for full-duplex audio.
I'm using the native client. Sound notifications are working, but for some reason it seems no application can access pulse audio. I tried deleting all the files in .config/pulse and rebooting, but still doesn't seem to work. Not sure what I might be doing wrong, I started from a fresh install under Proxmox.
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Another good solution but Why not use Xvnc server which comes free with linux (distros) and very fast
They're certainly proud of their paid versions... and I thought VNC was expensive.
Its totally free for up to 10 concurrent users. There is no difference in functionality between free and paid subscription
@@TheNomicon server, not viewer. server won't work at all without subscription, even for a trial.
@@DaveSomething Thinlinc server does not require any subscription. It's free to download and use, only limitation is 10 concurrent logged in users
@@TheNomicon ahh, my brain is nonfunctional today, I was still thinking about vnc
@@DaveSomething which VNC? You should give Thinlinc a go :)
how to uninstall thinlinc @LearnLinuxTV
Does the ThinLinc Server run on Ubuntu on an ARM machine? I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 on an Orange Pi 5 and was wondering if this would work for it?
No, the server package is only available for x86 at this time.
@@martinostlund854 I see. Thank you