One of the problems with having switched over a number of relatives to Linux is that I’m “the guy” when they have issues, and I can’t always get over to help them in a timely manner. A lot of the time most stuff is working just fine and it’s just a matter of popping into the desktop and fixing a bad link or a naughty plugin that’s slipped into Chrome etc, but it DOES require being able to see what they see.

Windows has a system where you can “request assistance” and then provide a code for access at which point it shares your desktop. There are similar systems where one can get a link in email and click it for support.

I’d like to find a system that I can host myself to allow users to queue up for support at which point I can pop into their system, without needing to open ports on their routers or using something hackish like forwarding a VNC port to an SSH server etc

  • Nyfure
    3•9 months ago

    Windows has a request assistance function? wtf… where is that found?
    I only know Remote desktop tools and most of these work perfectly fine on linux as the client or even under Wine.

    [Edit: woah, i did some rambling below here… not related to your specific case here, but some nice information maybe]

    Linux as host is where it gets funny… bigger ones support X11, pretty much none support Wayland.
    To be fair, its impossible to control mouse and keyboard under Wayland without root.
    I think we now have some new desktop packages for gnome and kde which can do that, so now they need to be implemented.

    But i dont see an effort being made for Wayland by the bigger providers in the near future… the market just isnt there and there is lots of uncertainty with the featureset.

    Switched to Rustdesk a while back, works nicely as client, but only picture output with wayland as host.l as of now.
    And i cannot copy&paste under wayland as client… even though it worked before…