Every Flavour Beans

It’s easy to control the desktop of your computer from a Nokia N800 Internet tablet. If the computer is running a GNU/Linux distribution, you can run a VNC server on that computer and then connect to it from N800 through an application like VNC Viewer. You can do the same if the computer is running either Windows or Mac OS operating system too, but they also support their own native remoting protocols - Windows supports RDP protocol and Mac supports ADP protocol - which are generally, though not in all cases, considered to be better options over VNC. You can learn more about the differences between VNC and other native protocols like RDP and ADP over the Internet.

If you decide that you want to use RDP to connect to a Windows machine, then read How to Access the Windows Desktop Remotely From Nokia N800 Using rDesktop.

Here is the summary of what we have to do in order to get VNC working: 1) install a VNC Server on the computer running Windows or GNU/Linux OS; 2) install VNC Viewer application on Nokia N800 Internet tablet; and 3) configure/run VNC Server and VNC Viewer to connect them together. So let’s get started.

Installing and configuring VNC Server on a Windows Computer

You can download and install any VNC server available for the Windows platform but I am going to use TightVNC server as the example here.

Our first step is to download the TightVNC server from its website. Either a) download the “setup.exe” version and install it by running it and going through the installation wizard, or b) simply download the “zip” version highlighted in the screenshot below, extract it in a directory and run “WinVNC.exe” from the extracted directory.

In the properties window that is shown when you run it, erase whatever is present in the password text fields and enter your own password (twice) in them, and then click OK. Make sure that you remember this password!

That completes the server side configuration.

Installing and configuring VNC Server on a GNU/Linux Computer

Most GNU/Linux distributions come with a VNC server pre-installed so this step is not required in most of the cases. If you are using the GNOME desktop, go to System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop. In the opened dialog box, select the settings as shown in the screenshot below. Remember the password that you enter in this dialog box.

If you are using the KDE desktop, go to KDE (start button) -> Internet -> Krfb Desktop Sharing. You basically need to search for Krfb Desktop Application in whichever menu your distribution might have placed it. Click “Configure” and select the settings as shown in the screenshot below:

If the above mentioned VNC Servers are not available on your GNU/Linux system, you can search your package manager or search one for your distribution over the web and install the one that you like. TightVNC server is one example that can be installed on almost all the platforms.

Installing VNC Viewer on Nokia N800

If the Maemo Extras repository is already added in your repository settings, you can install VNC Viewer from the Application Manager. If not(or you don’t know what repositories are), go to the website of VNC Viewer(from N800’s web browser) and click on the Single-click install file link for your tablet version(N770 or N800).

It should then be downloaded and installed on your tablet(answer OK/Yes whenever you are prompted to).

Connecting to your computer remotely from Nokia N800

The first thing we need to do now is to find out the IP address of your computer. Open a terminal/command prompt and run “ifconfig” as root on GNU/Linux or “ipconfig” on a Windows machine. On Fedora you may have to run “/sbin/ifconfig”. Example output on a Gentoo machine:

Note the IP address of your computer from the above output. You can run the VNC Viewer application from the Extras application menu.

When you run it, it will ask you for the IP address of the computer you want to connect to. Enter the IP address as shown in the following screenshot(substitute the IP address of your computer):

The format used to to connect to a GNU/Linux system is IP-Address:Display-number as shown in the screenshot i.e. 192.168.2.10:0; 0 is the display number here(the VNC Server will show you this display number; see the “Remote Desktop Preferences” screenshot above). To connect to a Windows machine, just enter the IP address like “192.168.2.10″(without the quotes). If all goes well you should be seeing the desktop of your computer displayed within the window of VNC Viewer on your tablet:

Well done! Here are more examples of how the desktop of a computer looks on the N800 tablet:
Ubuntu on N800 in fullscreen mode
Gentoo on N800
Windows on N800
Kubuntu on N770

Additional Notes

When accessing the desktop of your computer from Nokia N800, you do not have the access to N800’s on-screen keyboard. You can use the the keyboard of your PC if yours is a wireless one, but obviously it needs to be in the range of your PC to work. If you have a bluetooth keyboard that you have paired with N800, then it’s party time for you!

VNC access is usually slow on Windows systems(that’s why we use RDP). You can take several steps to make the experience more satisfactory:

1. Disable the background image on your XP/Vista machine or just configure VNC server to disable the background image whenever someone remotely connects to it.
2. Configure TightVNC server to refresh only the window under focus or window under the mouse.
3. Experiment with other VNC servers. Examples are RealVNC, UltraVNC.
4. I have heard from my friends that installing DFMirage on their XP machines made the experience better. I couldn’t test it as it is not yet totally supported on Vista operating system. In an email response, DemoForge’s CEO informed me that the next version due in a week or so will support both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista editions.

Now you can control the file downloads, select the music to play, or whatever that you would like to manage remotely, from the comforts of your bed/sofa. There is a lot more that you can achieve through VNC remoting but I hope this primer will help in getting you started.