Remote desktop access

[CwCrei]

Thanks to all the folks who have responded - useful stuff as ever... :)

Steve Flynn wrote:
> 
> Am I right in saying that VNC presents a view of the remote machine and that
> Remote Desktop differs in that you actually log onto the remote machine
> (kicking off any locally logged in user)?

Pretty much - I prefer the VNC way of doing things. For instance, I want 
to be able to start a session on one machine, and then when I go 
downstairs to make dinner, log in from a different machine and continue 
the session, and when dinner is over, return to the first machine and 
continue where I left off. VNC appears to allow this in a much neater 
way (without terminating the first session), whereas Remote Desktop 
doesn't - it does indeed kick off the local user, and worst still, I 
appear to be unable to log in remotely until I've logged in locally, so 
I can't just power-up the WinXP box and log in remotely, which is a 
right PITA with the 'dumb' XP box we use to play MP3s etc through the 
hi-fi...

> The difference is that with Remote Desktop the desktop becomes yours, but
> with VNC, like remote assistance) you merely join any locally logged in
> user?

I've been playing with VNC a bit today, but as my usual XP box doesn't 
have a client installed, I first used Remote Desktop to log into another 
XP box with the software installed, and then used VNC to connect to my 
Ubuntu box - I was slightly suprised that such a 'desktop dasiy-chain' 
was almost useable!

Anyway - one thing I appear unable to do is log into multiple accounts 
at once on the Ubuntu box? If no-one is logged in locally on the Ubuntu 
box, then RealVNC on XP gives a "connection refused" error. If someone 
is logged in, then RealVNC dumps me straight to their desktop. I want to 
be able to do the same with a remote desktop that I can with an SSH 
command line on my Ubuntu server - have more than one user logged in 
over the LAN, using the machine's resources simultaniously. I don't know 
if my inability to achieve this is simply a configuration issue, or 
whether it's simply not possible with VNC. I shall give Darren's 
suggestion a go when I have some time...

I thought the X Windows system was supposed to be 'network transparent'?

Many thanks folks,

PJ.