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"Headless" background X/Wayland server for VNC?
NimrodX Dec 17, 2023
I'm not actually planning to stream games this way, but since it's kind of a related concept I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to start up a X/Wayland server with a arbitrary size framebuffer that's not associated with a physical monitor simply to attach x11vnc to it.

My use case is that I have a Steam Deck but want a larger "desktop resolution" for my VNC window without having to hook up a physical monitor.
Shmerl Dec 17, 2023
VNC is a bad choice for remote access in general. Very suboptimal.

There are options like RDP or Sunshine / Moonlight.

Last edited by Shmerl on 17 December 2023 at 8:38 pm UTC
NimrodX Dec 18, 2023
yea, VNC is not excactly my favorite, but when I asked on the official forum about "what's the usual way to get a remote desktop on the steam deck" the only two people who responded said "ssh and vnc". So I was like, ok sure I'll try that to see if it's any easier to get working somehow.

but then I found out that there is no automated setup for it anyway, and if I'm going to have to create my own flatpak or something then I might as well pick something better.

It's almost like nobody has a steam deck, or at least nobody who does anything with it beyond running steam games. Most of the time I get no answer to questions, or I get a not very good answer.
NimrodX Jan 12
Seems like people are probably using VNC because RDP is a pain to get working. xrdp has to be installed from AUR, then you have to figure out how to get the virtual framebuffer working with plasma-x11. When I try to launch it I can login to xrdp as the "display manager" but when it tries to launch anything it doesn't work. not sure if it's Xorg or what. Difficult to debug....
Shmerl Jan 12
I think for rdp you should use freerdp. It's the best option both for client and server on Linux. Haven't heard of xrdp.

https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP

Last edited by Shmerl on 12 January 2024 at 8:24 pm UTC
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