Need help setting up a VNC server

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I want to set up a remote desktop server that I can access over wifi with my low-end laptops and get a no-lag experience. I don’t plan gaming or etc so delay won’t really matter for me, also when i did iperf3 tests between 2 devices speeds were about 100 Mbits/s

I found out that VNC would be my best choice, i have tried installing it on my server and my laptop, started a vncserver using vncserver :0 then connected to 192.168.10:0 from client using TigerVNC viewer command and everything seems to be working fine, I’m satisfied with the quality of image and delays which are close to 0, but there are few problems

My monitor has 2K resolution, and when i connect from laptop that has FHD display, i get only 1920x1080 part of the screen and i have to scroll to access other parts

Also, i may need to use few laptops at once, or use laptop and PC at the same time, but when i connect its like anydesk that just shares screen and lets me control it, not starting separate session.

Manjaro with KDE Plasma is installed on my server PC and i use X11 aka Xorg display on it, it has nVidia GPU. You can check out some more details on my profile.

I want each connection to have its own plasma session, but have same user.

I have tried following some tutorials on the internet like changing VNC config and setting geometry to desired one and entering display number = user in config like
:1=svitoslav

also i have tried running virtual X11 servers using tools like Xvfb and Xephyr, i managed to start a virtual display but it was blank, i tried doing export DISPLAY=:1 and then startplasma-x11, got some CPU load but nothing happened.

I have tried using tools like x11vnc, but get same issues

I have tried running vncserver :1 , it starts somewhat a new display, i could connect, i saw splash screen of my kde plasma theme but fully blank screen after it, maybe plasma or other part of the system fails to start

When i tried x11vnc -display :1 -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd
but got

Output

[svitoslav@svitoslavPC]$ x11vnc -display :1 -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd01/11/2023 14:59:54 passing arg to libvncserver: -rfbauth
01/11/2023 14:59:54 passing arg to libvncserver: /home/svitoslav/.vnc/passwd
01/11/2023 14:59:54 x11vnc version: 0.9.16 lastmod: 2019-01-05 pid: 9659
01/11/2023 14:59:54 XOpenDisplay(“:1”) failed.
01/11/2023 14:59:54 Trying again with XAUTHLOCALHOSTNAME=localhost …

01/11/2023 14:59:54 ***************************************
01/11/2023 14:59:54 *** XOpenDisplay failed (:1)

*** x11vnc was unable to open the X DISPLAY: “:1”, it cannot continue.
*** There may be “Xlib:” error messages above with details about the failure

Can someone help me with setting up a vnc or similar server on my manjaro kde plasma PC so i can use it as remote desktop from my low end laptops (they have linux installed on it) with the same user but different displays like :1 and :2 with custom resolutions, i want the xorg servers to run in the background so i can continue using my PC and at least don’t output to my monitor, and preferably utilize whole 100 Mbit bandwidth for better quality and lower delays

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Try searching the forum for vnc there is a lot of topics - amongst those are

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Thanks for your reply! These articles say that there is a limitation for multiple X sessions on same user or using VNC when physical display is active. Now i understand what is my issue but still have no idea how to solve it. Are there alternatives for vnc that will allow me to host a remote desktop server on my pc?

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GNU/Linux systems are multiuser user systems - you can have as many users as you like - the limitation is with concurrent access by the same user for the local display and remote.

So the obvious solution is to create a second user to be used for remote login.

You can have the physical display active with one user - and a remote connection using another user.

If you want those two users to share the same set of data - simply because you are the only user - move the data in question to a new folder starting in the root .

Example - create a user fido with home fido belonging to the group users

sudo useradd -m -G users fido

Set password for fido

sudo passwd fido

Create a folder for the data

sudo mkdir /data

Change owning group for /data to users

sudo chgrp users /data

Allow group to write in /data folder

sudo chmod g+w /data

Then add your own user to group users as well

sudo gpasswd -a $USER users

Install tigervnc and micro editor on the computer in question

sudo pacman -Syu micro tigervnc

Edit the tigervnc configuration

sudo micro /etc/tigervnc/tigervnc.users

Append a line reading - using display :4 ensures no conflict with existing sessions or displaymanagers - they usually use 1,2 or 7.

:4 fido

Save the file using CtrlS and exit the editor CtrlQ

Switch to fido fido user and setup your preference as described.

su -l fido
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