Peter's Blog

Redefining the Impossible

VNC vs SSH


I found one advantage of using ssh (e.g. putty) over vnc: no error bells. I was using a terminal under vnc and the bells were driving me mad. I disabled them in vim with:

:set visualbell t_vb=

but still got them on the bash command line. Tried various things from google to disable them at the linux end but nothing worked. Tried disabling the sounds in vnc (Control Panel/Sounds, VNC = None) but not joy.

Don't especially want to unplug the speaker so I went with the flow and used ssh.

Sudden thought: maybe I WAS going mad?


Filed under: putty ssh ubuntu vnc

5 Comments

Myles Braithwaite Says:

over 4 years ago

There is a way to do this in Gnome Termianl and maybe KDE's Terminal. I don't remeber but I will get back to you.

Peter Says:

over 4 years ago

On my laptop there is a nice mute button that does the trick smile

I would be interested in the correct solution for my work pc (lowest common denominator).

Peter

Peter Says:

over 4 years ago

Also on laptop setting the vnc beep sound to none stopped the beeps. Laptop effectively has a built in sound card and not a crude speaker.

Peter

Doncho Gunchev Says:

over 3 years ago

It's strange to me that you are trying to find ssh's advantages over vnc. Vnc has none for me, putty + MS's X server for windows leave none on vnc's side (yes, you can run GUI apps). Vnc on the other side has one huge disadvantage - it is not a bit close to ssh's security (and requires more network traffic).

Peter Says:

over 3 years ago

I do use VNC regularly for administering Windows servers where I work. This is because the servers are all locked away in a room that is some walk away and VNC allows me to, for example, unlock users in active directory. I am not sure there are any command line tools for doing this and in any case GUI tools are easier for this. This is all within the company network so the speed is acceptable.

For remotely administering Linux I always use ssh as it mainly involves editing /etc/* and restarting servers.

I don't trust VNC's security and would not expose a server to the internet. I use it through an ssh tunnel to administer from home, hence I am getting the best of both tools.

Peter

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