VNC in Debian 8 Jessie

04 Jun 2016

Debian 8 Jessie will not run vnc using the gnome desktop. This bug will not be fixed until Debian 9.

Solution is to either use KDE or Mate desktops. Mate is a fork of Gnome.

Uninstall Gnome

apt-get remove gnome-core
Install Mate

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment-extras
Reconfigure xstartup

Following this discussion.

pico /home/cudmore/.vnc/xstartup

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
#unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
#. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
#/usr/bin/mate-session

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
x-terminal-emulator -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
mate-session &

Restart VNC

vncserver -kill :1 # shutdown if neccessary vncserver :1
Login from a remote machine

On OS X, use VNC Viewer from realvnc

[UPDATE] 20160823 Installed cairo-dock

See this (I copy/pasted text below)

Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list (don’t forget to replace #CODENAME# by stable/testing/unstable)

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/glxdock/repository/debian #CODENAME# cairo-dock ## Cairo-Dock Stable

Then, copy-paste all this box in a terminal of your Debian stable/testing/unstable

su
wget -q http://download.tuxfamily.org/glxdock/repository/cairo-dock.gpg -O- | apt-key add - 
apt-get update 
apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

Force APT to use packages from our repository It’s recommended to force APT to use Cairo-Dock’s packages from our repository instead of Cairo-Dock’s packages from official Debian repositories (because the latter are poorly made with a lot of unnecessary dependencies). For that, simply create this file: /etc/apt/preferences.d/cairo-dock With this content:

Package: cairo-dock* libgldi* 
Pin: origin download.tuxfamily.org 
Pin-Priority: 990

Turn off default mate tray (the one at the bottom)

Right-click panel/tray and delete it

Add to startup items

/usr/bin/cairo-dock

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VNC in Debian 8 Jessie