VNC advantages over X-Forwarding

VNC advantages over X-forwarding include a faster, more responsive whole desktop vs. individual applications. Bandwidth compression means VNC can consume kB/sec instead of X-forwarding that may be up to MB/sec. Upon disconnect and reconnect, the VNC desktop can still be there as it was, whereas single application X-forwarding loses the application state.

To use VNC to HPC, usually the VNC is tunneled over SSH for security, as traditional VNC is not encrypted. The VNC server is already running on the HPC (or started by the user per HPC system documentation), and the user runs a VNC client on their local machine to connect to the VNC server on the HPC. For user workstations, the user might setup a VNC server. Numerous open-source or no-cost VNC clients are available including TigerVNC.

  • Windows: winget install --id TigerVNC.TigerVNC -e
  • macOS: brew install --cask tigervnc
  • Linux: apt install tigervnc-viewer or dnf install tigervnc

Then connect the SSH tunnel for VNC and run the VNC client to connect to the VNC server on the HPC or remote computer.