Thursday, October 21, 2010

Can I VNC from iPad to Haiku?

Well, why not?
There's a VNC Server available for download from Haikuware and this works pretty well.
I can connect from my MacBook using the native Snow Leopard VNC client to see and operate Haiku (nightly r39010 gcc2 hybrid) from my Mac. However, in truth, it's just a little slow and nothing like as smooth a remote desktop experience as when I connect from my Mac to Windows 7 (using TightVNC) or to Ubuntu 10.10 (using VNC4Server).
Another VNC client that works well for me from my Mac to servers in either Windows 7 or Ubuntu is the oddly-named Chicken of the VNC.
So what about the iPad? Well, there's a huge amount of VNC clients available but I chose Mocha VNC Lite, not only because it's free, but because of this great video tutorial (which actually deals with the iPhone but the iPad is no different).
Using Mocha on the iPad I can easily connect to Haiku r39010 on my Dell desktop.
However, control is not possible for reasons I don't yet understand. From the MacBook native client, connecting to the Haiku server AND controlling Haiku is possible using both the native client and COTVNC. I must mention, though that with the native client, control of Haiku is slow at best, while with COTVNC control is temperamental with considerable persuasion, possibly involving both mouse and touchpad, as well as considerable patience, to get something to open or launch in Haiku.
From the iPad, the best I can achieve with the touchscreen is to move the mouse pointer, but I can't launch or open anything. Note that if I connect from Mocha Lite on the iPad to Windows 7 (TightVNC) I can easily open or launch whatever I want.
I've posted to the Haiku forum about this, but no answers yet. However, there's almost certainly going to be as I've never been let down yet.

No comments:

Post a Comment