My old desktops run Lubuntu (Ubuntu but lightweight!) 11.10, which just became part of the official Ubuntu release. Life is a lot zippier in Lubuntu compared to Ubuntu when you’re on Pentium III and Celeron machines.
I wanted to be able to login to these computers remotely with a GUI, sort of like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop but Linux style. I didn’t want VNC because I wanted to be able to create a new login session instead of using the main console. Luckily XDMCP does exactly that and most of it is built into Ubuntu.
The Setup
Following one question previously posted on AskUbuntu, I proceeded to add the following snippet to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:
[XDMCPServer]
enabled=trueLogging In
Then following the procedures posted by David Winter, I opened Terminal on my Mac, and typed in: /usr/X11R6/bin/X -query 192.168.0.1 (replace 192.168.0.1 with the IP address of your Lubuntu computer). After a few moments the Ubuntu login screen showed up. Perfect!
Terminal Shortcut
I made myself an alias so that I wouldn’t have to remember the complicated command line. In ~/.bash_profile, I added:
alias xdmcp="/usr/X11R6/bin/X -query"So now I can start a XDMCP session by typing in
xdmcp 192.168.0.1
awesome tip. just what I was looking for.