Hi, not sure what to use and hoping someone has a recommendation. Iv already looked at TigerVNC but after reading Bobs blog about it, it doesn't let you view the current logged in user unless I've missed something, this is something I need it to do.

Why spy on someone else?

? its my own computer its just that I want to control it from my laptop instead of having to get up and go to the keyboard/mouse (lazy i know) but still want the current display on my TV... I can ssh into and that's fine but I also want to use some GUI things like browsers, VLC and such. I hope that clears things up better.

If you just want control, barrier is a great tool. For example, you can set it up so that when you move your mouse to the upper left corner of your laptop's screen, it "magically" goes to the upper right corner of the TV computer. And then when you move the mouse past the right edge of the TV computer's screen it "magically" returns to the left edge of your laptop's screen.

Basically, barrier emulates a multi-monitor display set up, but across different computers. You can even mix and match Windows and Mac computers in there also.

If you want a replicated display (while also keeping the original display active), then x11vnc and xtightvncviewer are a great combo. Naturally the replicated display will be a little bit laggy, especially over WiFi, but it's pretty good.

On your server (the TV computer) you run:
On your laptop, you run:
Replace 192.168.111.222 with your TV computer's IP address. (You may want to create entries in /etc/hosts so you can use computer names rather than raw IP addresses.)

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Thanks for your answer Barrier looks really useful never heard of it before but not really good for this case since I would like Slackware to be on another virtual desktop on my laptop to save confusion but thanks for the recommendation. Ill have a look at x11vnc and xtightvncviewer, again thank you for your help

--edit x11vnc was perfect for my needs, thank you

Ssh supports tunneling of X traffic through the encrypted connection. Example:

An voila! The firefox window running on theremotemachine will appear on the screen of mylocalmachine.

regards Henrik

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I run ssh with the "-X" option to allow for GUI applications to be run on the "remote" computer (i.e., my desktop computer) with the application window displaying on the "local" computer (i.e., my laptop).

It isn't the greatest solution, in that it won't run everything; playing videos on my laptop screen, for instance, won't work and just makes a mess of it.

However, I can now log in to my desktop computer through ssh and then run vlc & to open the VLC window, select my Google Chromecast as the playback device, and watch videos without hassle.

Some configuration was required to tell the ssh server to allow for X sessions; I cannot check the details at the moment, but I can look them up again later, if you wish.

I also set up two-factor authentication, so whenever I log in to my desktop computer through ssh, I now have to type in a verification code generated by, e.g., Google Authenticator on my phone.

I never really thought about x-forward via ssh tbh. x11vnc is doing the job so I'm happy with that. As a side note, I'm also using antimicrox to map keyboard shortcuts to a wireless game controller for simple navigation and such, so wont really be using remote desktop all that often its just their for when I need it