I have bought a new desktop this spring. The first thing I did was configuring wake on lan (in France, we have 7 days to cancel a purchase). The second one was to configure ssh and gnome to be able to administer it remotely (line DisallowTCP=false in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf).
I use Linux at work since 1999 and I have used a local display less than 1% of the time.
An application that does not work remotely does not exist for me.
Gnome Remote Desktop [0] is coming, it reached Fedora stable on September 30th, but exposes an API that allows Wayland and Gnome to work together over a remote connection.
For all other uses, you always have xwayland [1], until they adopt the new guy.
Where do you get these numbers ? At work, I do not know where the servers are physically located (some VMware ESX in a closet). Most of my colleagues are in the same situation. Even for windows, many people use terminal services for teleworking. At my previous job in Belgium, it was similar (with a different X server).
I have provided support to Nederlands and Portugal using X11VNC.
Outside work, my wife and my mother are using linux. They call me when they have an issue. Hopefully, I can help them remotely 99% of the time.
IMHO, local desktop is the exception in entreprises.
The lack of a reliable UI is one of the main reasons holding me back from using Ubuntu as my main OS. I wouldn’t mind giving up a native Remote Desktop if it means everything else works better.
I use my Linux desktop through VNC roughly 50% of the time I'm using it (though, honestly, most of the time I work locally on my laptop).
It's convenient to have access to the desktop session I left running the night before remotely if I want to. I mostly use it to sync files/code I forgot to upload when I quit the last time, or to start a download on Steam or something like that.
I'm sure Wayland will eventually support similar usage, but I understand you reluctance to adopt it until it does.
Yeah, but VNC is light years behind X11-over-network in so many ways. You have to have a full desktop instead of a single application. It's not integrated with your selection buffers or your session manager or your desktop. It's really a blunt object in comparison to X.
Which VNC server program do you use? Is it free (as in beer) and does it have a GUI for enabling/disabling and managing the configuration? Several months ago I was looking for one like that but didn’t find anything that was maintained in the recent times. Coming from OS X, where turning on VNC/screen sharing is a simple process in System Preferences, I found it surprising that it was difficult to do that on (Ubuntu) Linux (enabling file sharing with Samba also took a bit of fiddling around).
rdesktop is pretty easy to drop-in and use, with a nice GUI. They focus on Windows remote desktop compatibility instead of VNC, which can make it easier for some.
I think he was trying to explain why he immediately configured wake on lan, ssh and so on: had he encountered problems in the configuration, he could have returned the item to the store.
I use Linux at work since 1999 and I have used a local display less than 1% of the time.
An application that does not work remotely does not exist for me.