Looking for a multi-user remote desktop system (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by matto@lemm.ee to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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Hi all! I'm looking for a remote desktop control system that works in Ubuntu. Something like VNC, but that allows for more than one user to remotely see and control the screen of this Ubuntu Desktop at the same time. I've been looking around for a while now, but all the solutions I've found only allow for one user at a given time. If a second user logs in, the first one is kicked out. I'm not sure if this is even possible, but I'd really appreciate any help pointing me in the right direction. Thanks!

Edit: What I'm looking for is something like https://tuple.app/, but open source.

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[-] PeachMan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

BeyondTrust and SimpleHelp both support this functionality. You can invite a second technician to join the session. I suspect all they're really doing is opening up a second session at the same time, but the end result is that you can have two people remotely controlling a single computer.

But those are both "tech support" focused tools, so I don't know if they quite fit your use case. Parsec is another option that specifically advertises collaborative work like pair programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA21BnUsBJI

[-] tiddy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

Parsec is windows only with a non-hardware accelerated Linux client, moonlight+sunshine will work though

[-] matto@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks for your suggestions! All look like viable solutions, but I'm looking for open-source alternatives to those :)

[-] PeachMan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Oops, didn't notice which community we were in 😂

[-] Dymonika@beehaw.org 1 points 2 months ago

I've never heard of anything like that. Tall order... maybe put in a request to a current FOSS RD dev.

[-] Im_old@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Hum, what's the use case exactly? Two or more people controlling the same desktop at the same time seems really frustrating...

[-] matto@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

The use case would be pair programming. Only one of the users would control the desktop at a given time, and the second would be mostly watching and pointing out things. After a while, the roles of programmer and observer could switch and the second user could take control.

[-] hendu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago

I'd look into tools built for that purpose. For example, vscode's live share feature. Other IDEs have similar features.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 2 months ago

Have used it, it works well

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 2 months ago

I think they might be thinking of something like thin clients, if I were to guess, and a server they would connect to. But yes good call out for the XY problem.

Connecting multiple users to Ubuntu is probably pretty difficult. Setting up a server for thin clients is pretty easy