Ubuntu Oneiric and X2Go with LXDE for Remote Desktop

For OpenPetra, we want to provide a preconfigured Linux machine, so that interested developers can have a quick start, and don’t need to spend so much time on installing a development environment.

I looked at FreeNX, NeatX, OpenNX, and X2Go.
NeatX does not seem to be continued.

FreeNX with OpenNX works, but I had problems with the sound.
To install FreeNX on Ubuntu Oneiric, follow the instructions at Ubuntu Forums. This avoids the problem with esound and libesd0 packages.


Finally, I have to say that X2Go works best for me. Sound is played, and access from Windows and Linux works fine to my Linux Remote Desktop.


To install the X2Go server on Ubuntu Oneiric:

 apt-add-repository ppa:x2go/stable
 add universe to /etc/apt/sources.list
 apt-get update
 apt-get install x2goserver

You get the client from http://code.x2go.org/releases/binary-win32/x2goclient/


One thing I had problems with: there was a blank or black screen, after logging in.
To debug this: I searched the log files, but could not find any clues. Then I remembered this: use the terminal as login shell, which works. There you can start your desktop manager, in my case /usr/bin/startlxde.
The error that came up was: missing libNX_Xext.so.6
I then found on the mailing list a discussion: http://www.mail-archive.com/x2go-dev@lists.berlios.de/msg03254.html
So I added the line 

 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/nx/X11

at the top of /usr/bin/startlxde, and everything works now.


I also installed libjpeg-turbo, which should make the remote desktop even faster:

wget 'http://sourceforge.net/projects/libjpeg-turbo/files/1.2.0/libjpeg-turbo_1.2.0_i386.deb/download' -O libjpeg-turbo_1.2.0_i386.deb
dpkg -i ...
rm /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.62
ln -s /opt/libjpeg-turbo/lib/libjpeg.so.62.0.0 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.62

One useful key combination is ctrl alt t, which allows you to terminate or to suspend the current session.
It seems ctrl alt k does not work with X2Go, which would allow the task switching with Alt Tab to be inside the Linux workstation.
The shortcuts available from NoMachine are listed here: http://www.nomachine.com/ar/view.php?ar_id=AR03C00172


By the way, I got X2Go work fine on virtual machines running on VMWare ESXi, and also on OpenVZ.