I've been thinking about this for a little while - what is the best way to support users from a distance, to save them having to return a PC or Laptop to solve what may be a small issue?
I've used VNC extensively in the past and admire its versatility and open-sourciness. If I had access to the customer machines and their routers, it would be great to get them using VNC, but the configuration could be too complex for the average home user if they had to set it up themselves, even with me on the phone.
But I found out today about a product called Teamviewer. It comes with a .deb Linux client which also doubles up as a server (though it took me a long time to figure this out, and I was just about to give up and investigate other solutions...). Best of all, it's very simple to use. All a client would do is start it up, then give me the unique numbers and passcodes that it has generated for that session. I'm guessing (well pretty certain actually), that it uses the Teamviewer servers to manage the initial connection - it may channel all traffic through there too, though this makes less sense.
I've used it on two PCs on my desk and it all seems to work fine, so now I need to trial it with another tame user before considering installing it on any client machines that I happen to get my hands on. It could be handy for those "just in case" moments when I need to tweak a setting or two on a customer machine.
Link here
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