How to work remotely on Ubuntu from another Ubuntu [14.04.3]?

Question

I have a machine at home and a second at work. Both run the same version of Ubuntu 14.04.3.

I want to be able to connect to my home computer from the one at work. I want to see my desktop and work just as if I was sitting at home.

I want do do it securely so that noone else can access my machine at home.

I found some threads here relating the subject, but they are all old, so I'm not sure if applicable.

Use TeamViewer https://www.teamviewer.com/ You can also use any VLC software, though i recommend using RDP protocol for speed. Install xrdp for this. Note that you'll have to adjust firewall, dyndns and port forwarding if not using cloud service like TeamViewer. — mbiber, Jan 22 '16 at 14:08
There were not much changes in VNC so most old posts are still valid. You probably want to set up an SSH connection to your home. Then you can use VNC (e.g. this question). You also may want to consider X-forwarding through SSH for saving bandwith. — Takkat, Jan 22 '16 at 15:13
Possible duplicate of What do I need for remotely accessing my Ubuntu 14.04 desktop? — bain, Jan 22 '16 at 23:02

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '16 at 15:07

You can use VNC which can be installed (server version) on the remote computer. Meanwhile, I would recommand you setting an SSH tunnel, since VNC is all but secure !

Teamviewer also supports Linux. There is a free version, which works great on Ubuntu and Windows computers (both ways !)

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 22 '16 at 15:39

There's couple of solutions. Ubuntu comes with Remina, remote desktop client, which I've never used, so someone else will cover that. Alternative to that frequently (if not mostly) used for remote connections is ssh.

Let's say your home computer is going to be server. It will need to have open-ssh installed , so before you can connect , do

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Your computer at work will be client. If they were both at home, you would connect to it like so

ssh -X foobar@192.168.0.65

However, between your home computer and your work computer there is your home router. That means you have to make your router to politely guide connection from client to your server. Otherwise , the router will be a mean security guard who let's only VIPs into your home network.

What you need to do is have port forwarding set up on the router itself. For the router that means: "Whenever I, the router will see someone trying connect to me at port 22, I will need to guide it to that specific machine on port 22". Every router is different, but overview of how to set this up you can find here

Of course, the big draw back is that you have to know your home IP address. And it's a big draw back because ISP periodically changes IP addresses of the routers. You could sign up for noip DNS service (which is free by the way), which will basically assign a domain to your router and no matter what you will always have that domain point to your router.

Once you log into your domain , like ssh -X user@my.domain.blah you will now be able to run startx

Sounds good! BTW others suggest Teamviewer. That way someone at Teamviewer would have access to my machine as well right? I mean they are the middle man. Choosing ssh is peer to peer, correct? — so_user, Jan 28 '16 at 02:05
I've not used teamviewer so wouldn't know. Ssh requires knowing login or having rsa key as fas i know — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Jan 28 '16 at 02:09

How to work remotely on Ubuntu from another Ubuntu [14.04.3]?

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