How do I switch desktop environments in the Guacamole one-click app?
Hello. I use the Guacamole one-click app from the Linode Marketplace for a Debian 10 XFCE desktop environment in the cloud. I would like to switch to a GNOME desktop environment. I was able to install the GNOME desktop environment but everything I read online says the only way to switch desktop environments is to log out and choose the new desktop environment from the display manager screen. The problem is that if I log out I just get a blank screen until I reboot the server from the Linode Cloud Manager. There isn't a login screen other than the Guacamole login screen which is not for switching desktop environments. Any ideas on how to bring up the display manager (or otherwise switch desktop environments) without logging out would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
4 Replies
✓ Best Answer
I believe one-click apps are turnkey things. You can't change what they do. If you want Guacamole and GNOME, you're going to have to install a distro, Guacamole and GNOME without using a one-click app.
I hope you are the patient sort… Trying to use a complex desktop environment on a VPS running on a machine in a datacenter that could be hundreds or thousands of miles from you is just a recipe for loss of hair over the high network latency you're going to experience.
GNOME is not like your web browser. Every mouse motion, button click, key click, pixel draw, window move/obscure/refresh causes some number of round-trip network transactions between the X Server (you) and the GNOME software running on the VPS. You can imagine that this causes a lot of network traffic. Now extrapolate that over distances of hundreds or thousands of miles (or kilometers).
In short, it's gonna be SSSSSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW…very, very SSSSSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!
-- sw
Thanks @stevewi I use Debian a with GNOME desktop on a Shells.com server and it's not too slow but my employer times out that connection really fast. When I use Guacamole there is no timeout so I was hoping to be able to customize it. Anyway, I really appreciate the info. Best regards.
You can run:
killall vncserver
in the lish terminal to kill the vnc server and then run:sudo apt-get purge xfconf xfce4-utils xfwm4 xfce4-session xfdesktop4 exo-utils xfce4-panel xfce4-terminal thunar
and then
sudo apt auto remove
to remove xfce.
Now you can install whatever desktop you want. For example for the ubuntu mate desktop you can run
sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop
and then finally to start the vnc server again run:
vncserver
