Chrome Remote desktop instead of VNC?

[fedorov]

@pieper did you see this article: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/chrome-desktop-remote-on-compute-engine - what do you think about that approach?

[pieper]

That seems like a reasonable alternative. I use the chrome-remote-desktop to access a windows machine for slicer now that the opengl2 back end breaks microsoft remote desktop. It's not super fast but it works.

I see there's also this set of instructions for getting a gpu environment with yet another kind of remote desktop (something commercial PCoIP).
https://cloud.google.com/solutions/creating-a-virtual-gpu-accelerated-linux-workstation

My general preference is to stick with something fully open source with the idea it should also work on AWS and Azure, but obviously whatever works best is worth exploring.

For myself the x11vnc/noVNC approach is very reasonable and I have been using it to do some graphics tests and code editing.

[fedorov]

Well, after I saw this note, I was no longer sure: "This solution is not suitable for graphically intensive applications"...

For myself the x11vnc/noVNC approach is very reasonable

It definitely sounds reasonable, but I have not been successful to get it to work with SSH tunnel, and opening a firewall port is not an option in my situation.

[pieper]

I guess it really depends on your perspective that note about "not suitable" was probably written by that company trying to sell licenses to the commercial system.

I've definitely tunneled vnc over ssh in the past so I know it can be made to work (and it was also quite acceptable), but I haven't tried it with the google infrastructure. I'll give it a shot when I have some time. The reverse proxy approach should also be viable I would think.