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I am running Ubuntu. And my friends has Windows XP Pro. He has a desperate need for remote help.

So I was wondering if there is any program that will allow me to send my screen over to his computer so he can see what I am doing or. Some program that wil allow me to control his PC so I can help him remotely?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jan 4 '10 at 16:39

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10 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

The easiest way would be VNC. There are a lot of clients and servers for many operating systems. (VNC is not very fast but should be enough to help your friend)

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up vote 5 down vote

A great free alternative today is TeamViewer http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

They have clients for connecting to, and to receive connections f

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This is a great free option. It runs in wine, but it seems very reliable. – Casey Watson May 31 '11 at 2:39
They provide a version that runs on Linux itself. Are you saying that the way they provide it is their build running on Wine, or that you downloaded the Windows version under wine? – chamakits Jun 9 '11 at 8:00
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They distribute a Linux version that uses Wine under the hood. – Casey Watson Jun 29 '11 at 19:33
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up vote 4 down vote

You can check logmein.com

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Honestly, this is one of the easiest solutions to set up. Even has a web (flash) interface. – Christian Mann Apr 5 '11 at 5:56
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up vote 4 down vote

There's an app, Remotedesktop Client. Comes with Debian, so you should be able to install it. It is an RDP client, and can connect to XP and Windows 2003 server, and other versions what support RDP. Remotedesktop Client is the Gnome frontend to rdesktop.

You have to allow 'remote desktop connections' in the target XP machine.

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This is great way to do it. But the problem is that when I connect to his computer do he get logged out. So I think I will got with VNC :) – suxSX Feb 17 '09 at 11:22
There's a way to do remote desktop without getting him logged out. It's called "Remote Assistance" or something in windows. Sorry I can't be more specific, googling might turn up something. – davr Jan 4 '10 at 19:08
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up vote 2 down vote

If you wanted to connect to your friend I would suggest Rdesktop but for your friend to be able to connect to your ubuntu then you will have to run a vnc client of your machine.

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up vote 1 down vote

For German speaking people: On heise.de, there's a really good article about using VNC without explaining the helpless to set up port forwarding etc.

It's called Windows-Fernsteuerung auf Doppelklick (Windows remote assistance via double click). It works platform independent, because VNC is it, too :)

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up vote 0 down vote

It's not free, but we use GoToMyPC as it requires only the server on the machine being connected to (the Windows box) and the machine you are connecting from (your Ubuntu box) can connect using a web browser. They do have a free trial though, and that may be enough to get you going.

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up vote 0 down vote

RDP is the way to go, performancewise, IMO. Set up rdp on windows, use xrdp or krdp on linux, and you should be good.

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up vote 0 down vote

I'm also looking for something better to support my clients online. RDP is great, but it does take a few minutes and allot of patience for the average PC user to setup over the phone. Logmein is great, but only for established clients where you have the chance to setup the client correctly... physical access is best.

VNC is ok, but performance and stability is an issue. Crossloop would be ok, but your advertising their service, more so than your own.

RDP is the way to go.... just have to perfect a system for configuring the target machine, maybe a batch script to create RDP user, turn on RDP, forward port on the router (PNP), and piing back a certain IP to announce availability.

Shouldn't be that hard, right?

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up vote -1 down vote

If your friend can't forward the ports for whatever reason, give CrossLoop a shot. If not, Remote Desktop is a really nice way to go.

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I don't think CrossLoop has a Linux client. – Casey Watson Dec 2 '09 at 2:21
It does not. The entire site has no content about Linux. – Broam Jan 4 '10 at 18:29
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