Using a Ubuntu VNC client to connect to a Leopard Remote Desktop

This post explains how to connect to a Leopard Remote Desktop session from a Ubuntu client machine using VNC. It is assumed that Remote Desktop is enabled on their Mac (you should also read this regarding a password on your Leopard Remote Desktop server).

The Leopard Remote Desktop speaks a flavor of vnc, albeit one which common vnc clients seem to have difficulty with. I tried both Ubuntu's default vnc client in addition to a realVNC client, both without success. However I did find that the tightvncviewer successfully connects.

To get xtightvncviewer, install this package:

sudo apt-get install xtightvncviewer

When you want to initiate a Leopard Remote Desktop session, open a terminal and start up xtightvncviewer:

xtightvncviewer ip.of.your.mac

You should be prompted with your password (you did set a password on your Leopard Remote Desktop, correct?), and following that you should then see the desktop of your Mac in the vnc window.

Quicktime video in Firefox on Ubuntu

Quicktime doesn't seem to work by default in Firefox on Ubuntu.

To get it working, you'll need to check/install plugins which Firefox uses to play video.

First, remove any other firefox plugins related to video; on my system these included:

sudo apt-get remove mozilla-mplayer
sudo apt-get remove mozilla-plugin-vlc

(I had previously installed these in attempts to get Quicktime working.)

Next install an additional plugin for gstreamer:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-gl

Now point your browser to some quicktime content (http://www.apple.com/trailers/) and enjoy.

Note: I was previously using the mozilla-mplayer package with some success, though Firefox would periodically crash for some unknown reason when viewing Quicktime content .