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Desktop solutions for a self-hosted environment

Hi everyone

I’ve got a capable Ubuntu server hosting Docker, using Portainer to manage many stacks and containers. I’m about to add a couple machines to a swarm for a little fault-tolerance.

Before this, Docker was Windows hosted which gave me a useful addition; a handy remote desktop for those times when I wanted to do something remotely using a GUI at home.

hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/rdesktop seems to work OK but I wondered if the community here have any suggested alternatives. Instead of running within Docker, has anyone simply installed a GUI on the Ubuntu host?

Thanks in advance for your input.

uninvitedguest ,
@uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca avatar

Orb is a project I’ve been meaning to check out. It may meet your needs.

gitlab.com/hsleisink/orb

It’s not yet in Docker, however. See the top comments from a couple months back: www.reddit.com/r/…/orb_v021_has_been_released/

Sim OP ,

Cool project, thanks!

SheeEttin ,

A GUI desktop for what? I’ve never installed a Linux server with a GUI.

But you can certainly do it. I’m sure there’s a metapackage or something that will pull in all the requirements.

Sim OP ,

This is not to manage or work on the server, I use terminal and web-based UIs for all of that.

This to host a desktop I can use remotely. Sometimes using my local desktop isn’t what I want to do; I might be running a lower power machine, or want to do something I can’t on the machine I’m actually using. Or I might want to use a remote Linux desktop from a Windows machine. Sometimes the other way around.

PuppyOSAndCoffee ,
@PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml avatar

if you just want a desktop, kasm is def on the swankier side

remember you can always use x-windows on a local computer to run things directly on a remote box.

lemann ,

I’m worried about if/how Wayland is going to affect X11 forwarding TBH… It’s a really useful linux feature that i’m susprised gets very little use

Sim OP ,

kasm looks good, thanks - it’s definitely in the area; desktop as a service. I want something I can suspect and go back to, not sure if I can do that on kasm or not but a good tip, I’ll check it out.

psmt ,

More server oriented than a classical desktop: cockpit-project.org

Sim OP ,

Very useful, reminds me of another browser based Linux manager I forget the name of. Not specifically what I’m trying to achieve but very handy to know, I’ll try it. Thanks.

Maruki_Hurakami ,

Was it webmin?

webmin.com

Sim OP ,

Yes, that’s it!

constantokra ,

What are you trying to do? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t imagine anything i’d do on a server where i’d want a GUI.

Even where I could imagine it, there are other options. If you want a graphical file manager, run one in docker or use sshfs to mount it whenever you want. Change config files? Vim. Or nano or whatever if you hate vim. Or spin up a full coding environment whenever you need it and mount in your config files. Just don’t leave it running and don’t expose it. If you just need a linux desktop for a while, and it’s not actually for your server, install a linuxserver.io webtop.

What are you trying to do?

Sim OP ,

I want my server to host a desktop that I can use remotely. Not for managing the server itself; like you describe, I use common tools for managing it.

I just need a desktop for a while - sometimes I want to work on a machine that’s not the one I’m physically using. At the moment I simply have an old desktop running Windows; I VPN to home and RDP to to the machine which works very well, but it seems a waste to have a machine running for this purpose only. I could add the machine to the swarm if I could host a desktop in Docker but that’s not really the intent of Docker and doesn’t yield great results.

constantokra ,

In that case, use linuxserver’s webtop container. I use one for exactly that. Runs in a browser. I mounted the home directory to a folder so it keeps any files and settings I have, but I haven’t mounted anything else to a volume, so whenever I restart the container it’s fresh. Makes it really easy to try out software or configurations.

mypasswordis1234 ,
@mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world avatar

Check out this: github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtopYou can stream the GUI directly to your web browser! This is so sick 😅

Sim OP ,

RDP is fine but a brower stream is just as good if the performance works out, I’ll give it a look, thanks.

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