OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Screen sharing - HOWTO

To make my life easy I want to be able to connect to it remotely from my Ubuntu (Gutsy 7.10) laptop. Luckily with Leopard's new screen sharing and a bit of googling it's easy to connect both ways.

Ubuntu to OS X

The Apple screen sharing uses a version of VNC - but the default VNC client on Ubuntu won't work with it - however thanks to this post I discovered the xtightvncviewer will work.

You need to configure your Mac to allow it with the following settings:

• Open "System Preferences"
• Select "Sharing"
• Ensure "Screen Sharing" is on
• Select "Computer Settings" on the Screen sharing page
• Tick both boxes - "Anyone my request..." and "VNC viewers may control..." and add a password.

Note the address of your machine also - eg: vnc://192.168.0.55 or similar

Then over to the ubuntu machine and install xtightvncviewer:

Then connect to the machine with: (change the ip address as relevant)

OS X to Ubuntu

You need to enable remote desktop sharing in Ubuntu:

• Select "System->Preferences->Remote Desktop" from the menu
• Tick the following boxes: "Allow others to view...", "Allow others to control...", and "Require ... password" and enter a password.

Then open up safari and type in the the address of you Ubuntu machine with vnc:// in front of it. eg:

It will give a warning about the vnc server not supporting "Keystroke encryption" but it will work (albeit not as securely as a Mac to Mac connection) - but good enough for your local network.

That's it - I did notice that it also showed up in Finder->Shared which I presume it found via Avahi/Bonjour - which is nice.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Mark