VNC or Tightvnc for remote pc access
I was surprised to do a search and find that I haven’t mentioned tightvnc before (or even merely VNC as a useful tool.) Ok – here’s the scenario, you need a way to get remote pc access, or remotely view a desktop, maybe it’s a Windows machine and you’re using a Mac? Or Maybe it’s a Mac and you have a linux desktop? Or a Linux server from a Windows machine? Most of the time in the Windows to Windows remote control area the choice becomes either Remote Desktop, or PCAnywhere. There are other options though. One that I’m particularly found of is TightVNC, which is an implementation of the VNC protocol (VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing).
One of the really powerful features of VNC as a protocol is that there are implementations for several different platforms, So on the mac there is OSxVNC, for Windows or linux, there is tightvnc. TightVNC download page. The original version of VNC was developed at AT&T Research Labs in the UK. The successor to that version is available at RealVNC.com. RealVNC provides a free (open source, GPL) edition as well as Personal and Enterprise additions for a fee with added features.
My preference for some time has been a variation of VNC called tightvnc, which is fully compatible with the VNC protocol, but with special optimizations for slower network connections. The Win32 version of tightvnc features file transfers through the remote control interface, a variety of compression levels, read-only as well as full-control passwords and other improvements on the original VNC. In the unix/linux version there is support for automatic tunneling through ssh connections.
The VNC protocol uses port 5900 by default for the first desktop (some platforms, like linux can support multiple simultaneous remote desktop logins.)
Anyway, it’s one of those tools that I have found very handy (especially the ssh tunneling).