I’ve been using RealVNC for family computer help and have been wanting to setup a self hosted replaced for a while now, but haven’t had the time. RealVNC has recently axed their free levels, so I’ll use it as a reason to setup a self hosted solution.

Ideally it would be something like a web page (I have a domain and reverse proxy) where family can go, get a code or a software to run, which will then let me control their system securely.

I was considering guacamole on a pi at each location I’m likely to have to support, but this doesn’t help when family is away from their home network on laptop.

What is out there for this? Have you used it? What are your experiences?

Thanks

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.caEnglish
    15·
    6 months ago

    I use Rustdesk for 99% of my remote desktop needs (RealVNC only for my Raspberry Pi).

    I will add that self-hosting Rustdesk makes it reliable and fast. When I use the public servers, it was not a good experience.

    I’m running it off my Synology NAS through docker.

  • sorter_plainview@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    6 months ago

    RustDesk

    If you have used AnyDesk in the past, this gives the same experience. Recently used it and has a lot of features, including unattended access.

    They recommend self hosting an instance for better performance.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access
    VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

    3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

    [Thread #752 for this sub, first seen 16th May 2024, 07:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • Ferawyn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    I have always preferred TightVNC over the various other VNC flavours. It does only one thing, but does it well, with minimal setup and network requirements.

    I have tried RustDesk recently, and the performance when it worked was nice. But I found it too complex to set up across more than a few machines, and ultimately unreliable, with connections failing without any useful error message, an unresponsive relay, weird certificate errors, etc… It needs a couple of years to mature.

    I would suggest looking into using WireGuard to wire your various networks and computers together. It works very well most platforms. You can easily give laptops a road-warrior connection, so they always phone home. Then it doesn’t matter where they are.

  • farcaller@fstab.shEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    Your requirements sound a lot like Chrome Remote Desktop and it’s pretty trivial to install, which might be a handy thing for family members that aren’t tech-savvy.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    I turn Tailscale on at their computers and ask them to turn on VNC when I need to assist them on the desktop. Or you can use anything else, there’s plenty of remote desktop apps once you waive the security requirement (because it’s private anyway due to Tailscale).

  • BCsven@lemmy.caEnglish
    22·
    6 months ago

    Rustdesk or Teamviewer https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/linux/

    Rustdesk ia great and almoat feature to feature with teamviewer. Rustdesk has some non opensource code portions and some have speculated that the contributors could be chinese state actors, etc. But TV is proprietary…so…