GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 681150
Remote access as an optional application?
Last modified: 2013-01-28 11:08:25 UTC
During GUADEC I had an interesting discussion about what to do with the existing Desktop Sharing Preferences. These don't fit in with the split between applications and system settings. There are three main uses for vino that I can think of: 1) showing someone your desktop 2) remotely accessing your machine while you are in another location 3) allowing a support technician to "take control" in order to fix something 1 seems like it should be something that is integrated into Chat and should be presented as a Chat feature. 2 & 3 might work better as an optional application that users can install. Remote access isn't all that common, and possibly isn't appropriate for some classes of devices. Having a "Remote Access Server" application would also allow for functionality that might be appropriate for that type of usage (such as viewing access logs, configuring who can access and when, etc). Thoughts?
As an application or feature of other applications (Empathy), I agree that desktop sharing is fine as an optional feature outside of the control center. The only reason to have desktop sharing as a preferences panel somewhere in the control center is if it is installed and running as a service, which is currently the case (if Vino is enabled, it starts at session start). This could be changed without too much difficulty. The remote access server idea is interesting, but something that is probably out of scope for a ‘simple’ VNC server. I do not have time to implement it for the foreseeable future, but there is an open bug about improved logging (bug 162465).
(In reply to comment #1) > As an application or feature of other applications (Empathy), I agree that > desktop sharing is fine as an optional feature outside of the control center. ... Ideally this should Just Work - you'd simply press "Share my desktop" (or whatever) from within a video chat. > The remote access server idea is interesting, but something that is probably > out of scope for a ‘simple’ VNC server. I do not have time to implement it for > the foreseeable future, but there is an open bug about improved logging (bug > 162465). You wouldn't have to take care of this yourself. Initially it would just mean cutting vino-preferences from the server part and making it installable as an app. We could then come up with designs for a fully-fledged remote access server app and see if someone wants to take it on. The question I have is whether it makes technical sense to do such a split.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 692695 ***