More on remote desktop using x11vnc

On January 8, 2008, I posted about remote desktop. I've since found two nice features of x11vnc that I wanted to share.

The first is scaling. My work desktop is 1680x1024 and 1600x1280. My home desktop is 1280x1024 and 1280x1024 (both lcd native resolutions). I wanted my entire work desktop to fit on my home desktop. The solution was using scaling.

x11vnc -scale 5/8

This scales the desktop by the named fraction. The fraction can be less than one (reduction) or greater than one (zoom). It does seem to slow down the display.

Another nice feature is sharing a single window rather than the entire desktop. My naming a window id to share, x11vnc will only share that window, not the entire desktop. To get the window ID, connect to the remote Linux host and run

xwininfo -display [display] -name [name]

Where [display] is the display on which the window is being shown on. I use localhost:0 as my display, which maps to my left monitor at work.

And where [name] is a substring of the window title. I use 'Eclipse'. This will return a hex window id (and other information). Note this id.

Now, run x11vnc with the -id parameter:

x11vnc -id 0x12345678

Then on your local host, run your vnc viewer.