I installed intrepid last night - kde4 looks great on the monitor.

However, I use my linux box predominantly over vnc via ssh, and it looks awful. I've been able to post a screenshot at the following link:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=993321

In particular, you can't read the taskbar items. It seems to be anything with a gradient fill or shadow looks **** when compressed over vnc.

Is there any way of switching off these effects and just having a plain old desktop? In particular, is there any way of switching off these effects just for the screen served to vnc, as it's nice to have the eye candy if I log in at the desktop.

I also noticed that when you log out a 'confirmation screen' comes up with a 30 second countdown, but this doesn't show at all over vnc!

ukdoc wrote:I've been able to post a screenshot at the following link:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=993321

The attachments can only be seen with an account to ubuntuforums. Could you please use something like e.g. [url]http://imageshack.us/[url] for sharing images?

Cheers, m

KRFB and KRDC are somehow unusable with intrepid... big colored squares all over the screen.. some windows are not even displayed sometimes and the speed is under every acceptable level.. i just installed vino and vinagre (gnome pendants) and it workes great even with all effects... i have no idea whats wrong with that atm.

(using nvidia cards on both machines)

Unfortunately due to the way VNC compresses you will not be able to use the default themes over it.

You can get a KDE 3 imitation style by using:
- The Aya Plasma theme,
- The Plastik window decoration, and
- The Plastik widget style.

With that being said the new Plasma panel has had a slight make-over and doesn't use any heavy gradients anymore so it should at least be readable in 4.2.

Zarin wrote:Unfortunately due to the way VNC compresses you will not be able to use the default themes over it.

You can get a KDE 3 imitation style by using:
- The Aya Plasma theme,
- The Plastik window decoration, and
- The Plastik widget style.

With that being said the new Plasma panel has had a slight make-over and doesn't use any heavy gradients anymore so it should at least be readable in 4.2.

Done that, and it is a bit more readable.

However, that doesn't do anything about the taskbar items being invisible. And more annoyingly the screen that pops up after selecting logout or another 'leave...' option does not show up - only a blank screen.

Here's a link to the screenshot for anyone that can't view it on ubuntuforums

http://www.drivehq.com/folder/p5040103.aspx

You could try NX from NoMachine http://nomachine.com/ instead of VNC

Cheers,
_

anda_skoa wrote:You could try NX from NoMachine http://nomachine.com/ instead of VNC

Cheers,
_

Thanks for the suggestion. NX is much better, though it tends to hog the resources of the client pc when there are a lot of windows open. Is there a windows mobile version of an nx client - I've googled and not been able to find one.

The only problem I've found with NX is that I can't get through the http proxy at work with the windows client. Strange, as I can open an ssh terminal with putty and use a vnc client.

ukdoc wrote:Thanks for the suggestion. NX is much better, though it tends to hog the resources of the client pc when there are a lot of windows open.

Which of the operation modes do you use? I have had quite good experience with full desktop session, accessing my usual KDE session with multiple desktops, continuously running applications and so on.

ukdoc wrote:Is there a windows mobile version of an nx client - I've googled and not been able to find one.

Sorry, no idea.

ukdoc wrote:The only problem I've found with NX is that I can't get through the http proxy at work with the windows client. Strange, as I can open an ssh terminal with putty and use a vnc client.

You can tunnel the NX connection through the SSH connection using a local port forwarding rule.
Unfortunately I forgot which port the NX client tries to connect to, probably something around 5000.

Cheers,
_

Thanks, the port forwarding worked of course. Can't believe I didn't think of that in the first place. Doh!

NX-Client comes with way too much overhead and chosing a basic theme w/ no effects may work but it's sad to do this to the local Desktop experience. I'm not complaining though as I know the KDE developers are working hard and aren't finished yet. I hope that addressing this issue is on the drawing board for future development.

Rather than turning off all the effects and chosing a very basic theme it would be nice if KDE could have two modes to run in, one for slow/remote connections and one for local high speed ones. Actually, I hope this becomes a regular feature of all desktops as 3-d effects, shading, etc... catch on.

I've seen the same problem when using krfb: big clunky discolored blocks and an effect I can only describe as "ghosting". However, installing x11vnc and using that instead seems to work just fine. Takes a bit of setup, but one advantage is that the kdm login screen is available via vnc.

Once installed, I have a one-line script that does this:

Code: Select all

x11vnc -forever `ps -ef | grep X | grep auth | sed 's/.*(-auth.*).*/1/'`

I would suggest you also add some authentication there to protect your screen. That is also done independent of KDE. Have a look at the rfbauth option.

You don't need to configure your desktop, to solve problem, Just uninstall krfb and install old one. And wait while they fix everything.

Yes, as Troy Carpenter notes what you really need is a proper vnc server. You'll find that while KDE4 looks horrid with some vncservers, the ones on Mac, Windows and decent ones on Linux all look and behave very well.

sorry, this is quite old, but i have to bump it, since aarons statement seems to be wrong.

I tried krfb, tightvnc and x11vnc and all had the same problem: messed up graphics (with and without composite) and HORRIBLY slow screen updates - impossible to work on. It works fine if i start x11vnc/tightvnc with openbox or something similar, but when i open a kde4 application it will still look odd, with lots of graphical glitches. Gtk2 apps work fine...

Try switching from the Oxygen style to an alternative such as Plastique. Oxygen uses gradients, etc. which unfortunately are not handled well by VNC.