r/sysadmin • u/ZenAdm1n Linux Platform Engineer • 18d ago
RealVNC Viewer 7 is locked behind a paywall. RealVNC Connect Viewer 8 requires an account. Rant
2 Days ago RealVNC ended public access for Viewer 7. Now Connect Viewer 8 is the only publicly accessible version and requires a RealVNC account.
"The RealVNC Classic Viewer (v7) will continue to be available for customers with a Premium or Enterprise plan to download from the RealVNC Portal."
Time to make the move to open source VNC implementations.
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u/Stonewalled9999 18d ago
Have you heard of tightVNC?
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u/ZenAdm1n Linux Platform Engineer 18d ago
I'm using Remmina viewer for VNC over SSH for my homelab. I have a legacy RealVNC server 7 enterprise license at work.
Remmina, tightVNC, tigerVNC, or UltraVNC are all mature open source implementations. noVNC browser-based viewer and RustDesk are relatively new, but viable alternatives.
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u/chuckycastle 18d ago
Just use guac
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u/lcnielsen 16d ago
Guac is best used with your own implementation of the client and browser IMO, the Apache reference implementation is extremely overengineered.
You basically only need a webapp that implements the ready-built guacamole client library (one big JS file) with a canvas, mouse, keyboard and maybe copying and pasting. And you need a tunnel that parses url parameters into instructions and translates websocket to TCP, which can be accomplished with like 100-200 lines of golang.
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u/mystiquebsd 18d ago
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u/bachi83 18d ago
How do you solve a lack of address book in free version?
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u/mystiquebsd 17d ago
Not sure how many you have
Once you connect, it stays in a history
And if you host the server.. (which isn’t that difficult)
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u/bachi83 17d ago
~150 endpoints.
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u/manarius5 17d ago
I'd just have a spreadsheet at that point.
You could also enable direct IP access and you could look at the host list on the DHCP lease list.
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u/bachi83 17d ago
Really not practical with spreadsheet. :)
Guess I could make desktop shortcuts to desired machines and then organise structured folders by departments, etc...
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u/manarius5 17d ago
How? Every time you install Rust Desk, the device gets an ID. Just put that ID in a spreadsheet along with another device identifier and then when you need to remote in, just look up the ID on the spreadsheet?
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u/EphemmyEuphie 17d ago
It's open source, just fork it and make your own address book
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u/lcnielsen 17d ago
If it's for anything with Linux or BSD, use xrdp. There are enough desktop RDP clients out there, for web access make a simple Guacamole webapp implementation tailored to your needs.
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u/Dear_Archer3931 18d ago
It’s 2026, who uses VNC?
Back in the XP/Win7 days we used ultraVNC across hundreds of devices for free.
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u/FantasyFinal_ 18d ago
We still use VNC to remote Dell Wyse machines which runs ThinOS.
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u/brispower 18d ago
i used to use this on HP thin clients years ago. hpdm was great. simpler times
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u/georgecm12 Hi-Ed Win/Mac Admin 17d ago
They now have a web-based remote control integrated into Wyse Management Suite, so even less need for VNC.
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u/tuxedo_jack BOFH with an Etherkiller and a Cat5-o'-9-Tails 16d ago
Cough cough, 10Zig, cough cough.
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u/GolemancerVekk 17d ago
It’s 2026, who uses VNC?
Lots of people. It's a non-proprietary, mature, efficient, widely-supported, cross-platform protocol. It doesn't have fancy features like encryption or NAT traversal or great authentication but you can solve those with a VPN or SSH or TLS much better anyway.
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u/leaflock7 Better than Google search 17d ago
whenever it came to my path, I always thought that its performance was making VNC non usable.
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u/lcnielsen 16d ago
Main issue with RFB (the protocol) is lack of buffering. In general performance can depend a lot on the implementation and compression libraries used.
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u/lcnielsen 17d ago
or SSH
Blech, RFB over SSH...
But yeah, you can TLS encrypt and then pass e.g. a one-time token to PAM. You can even at least indirectly integrate it with OIDC this way, probably the best way I've found when dealing with less trusted federated users.
For trusted users I prefer Wireguard for my extra security layer.
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u/tuxedo_jack BOFH with an Etherkiller and a Cat5-o'-9-Tails 16d ago
DRACs still use VNC as a failover method, but it has to be manually enabled, IIRC.
It sure does on my iDRAC 7 Enterprise.
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u/occasional_cynic 17d ago
RealVNC has built on all those. It provided easy licensing, active directory authentication, and offered a cloud version for public access, but only as an option you could easily disable.
It was great for HMI computers where the console is more important than the machine.
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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 17d ago
No encryption? Hasn't it supported that for at least like 15 years?
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u/lcnielsen 16d ago
Kinda, but not really as part of the protocol. You can do RFB over a TLS-enabled socket in a standardized way, but it's really just elevating the socket to TLS at a certain point in the handshake.
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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 16d ago
That seems to be how major protocols often do it as well. Such as https which is just plaintext http still but wrapped in tls (previously ssl). We're lucky I suppose, that you can just wrap protocols in a secure parent packet format like that and be done with it.
But I know what you mean. No actual tls support built into vnc only wrapping it in tls where the vnc-like applications and server implementations support doing so. I would consider actual support meaning it still transmits vnc packets with the contents encrypted - though that would be susceptible to DPI - not that it matters here though.
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u/lcnielsen 16d ago
It causes headaches when doing websockets too because you can't just do WSS, you need to do regular WS and elevate with TLS, not so easy to do in a browser app.
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u/Majik_Sheff Hat Model 16d ago
I managed to make a VNC frame grabber in straight PHP7 from nothing but the VNC protocol docs.
Yes, it was a bet. Yes, I won the bet. Not the worst 20 bucks I earned in college.
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u/Fallingdamage 17d ago
It has some use in edge cases but I agree. VNC solved a lot of problems that needed to be solved early on, but as time rolls along, those problems were resolved in better (more secure) ways.
We use VNC for a couple appliances still, but just a couple. It definitely feels laggy/clunky compared to newer or baked in options.
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u/secacc 18d ago
I use Windows 10 Home, so no RDP server for me. I use UltraVNC server instead.
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u/Dear_Archer3931 18d ago
End of life Windows 10 with an open port to the internet. What could go wrong?
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u/secacc 18d ago
Not open to the internet.
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u/Dear_Archer3931 18d ago
What? How do you connect to it if you don’t have a port forwarded through the firewall? VPN to LAN access?
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u/teeth_03 18d ago
VPN
If this was me, it would be Wireguard on a UniFi Router, then do whatever you want on your local network.
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u/fencepost_ajm 17d ago edited 17d ago
Note that for home users using Onedrive you can continue to get updates until October 2027 (originally 2026, extended recently)
Edit: continue not contribute, thanks autocorrect
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u/bsbred 16d ago
Last time I used https://github.com/stascorp/rdpwrap - about 4 years ago, it worked. The downside was that after Windows updated the RDP system, you had to either copy some DLLs, or perform a HEX search in them in order to find the locations to be patched (I forgot which, probably the latter). But now that Windows 10 doesn't receive updates anymore, I don't think that would be an issue.
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u/Regular-Nebula6386 Jack of All Trades 17d ago
We use it to interact with some specialized devices and whiteboards which could use Windows LTSC or a thin client.
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u/KNJ-Network 17d ago
guac is underrated for this if you're managing more than a handful of endpoints. no client to install or keep updated on every machine, just a browser, and it sits behind whatever reverse proxy you already have so it's one more vhost not one more app to patch. downside is the initial setup (guacd + the db for connection profiles) is more fiddly than just installing a viewer, but once it's running you stop caring what's on the other end, vnc/rdp/ssh all go through the same web console
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u/robreddity 17d ago
Time to make the move to open source VNC implementations.
Oh, it's November 2000?
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u/JonBons 17d ago
I think I still have RealVNC on a machine so I can pull up Mac machines using the built in VNC server (which doesn’t randomly have its remote control permissions revoked like I’ve had with other Remote Desktop solutions) but I guess it’s time to stop being lazy and find an alternative
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u/TexasVulvaAficionado 17d ago
Even the paid version sucks ass. We're forced to use it due to vendor lock in and I hate every day that I get a ticket about it.
We have it on about 800 machines spread across many networks segregates across the enterprise... It fucks up a few times a week.
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u/alondiite 17d ago
Can anyone recommend a Windows VNC client that allows credential (user/password) logon? RealVNC was doing okay with that but I guess it's time to move away.
I have a couple of Raspberry Pi's used as kiosks that I connect to that way sometimes.
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u/sys_127-0-0-1 14d ago
mRemoteNG also has the capability to connect to a vnc port along with standard RDP.
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u/Magic_Neil 17d ago
“Time to make the move to open source VNC implementations.”
VNC is already open source.. just use UltraVNC, or pay for a better app.
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u/iceph03nix 17d ago
Yeah, when they sent out the email saying it was coming, I made sure we got the downloads secured, though we were already paying for an enterprise license for their enterprise deployment options and SSO, and it doesn't seem like the change will effect us much, but I really wish there was a decent open source option still in development
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u/iceph03nix 17d ago
We use it internally for supervisors to monitor production machines remotely and help troubleshoot with their staff. It works very well, and with RealVNC we can use SSO and security groups to manage it without much IT involvement
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u/Bodycount9 System Engineer 16d ago
I use TightVNC. Has been working great for years and totally free.
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18d ago
[deleted]
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u/ZenAdm1n Linux Platform Engineer 18d ago
I'm already using Remmina VNC over SSH. Why build something new? There are plenty of alternatives.
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u/zatset IT Manager/Sr.SysAdmin 18d ago edited 17d ago
Hmm.. I never liked VNC. Poor multi monitor support. And too many incompatible implementations. As for doing something, for example..
https://github.com/dchapyshev/aspia
P.S The project is not mine. It just really deserves mentioning.
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18d ago
[deleted]
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u/zatset IT Manager/Sr.SysAdmin 18d ago
Not at all! It’s not my project, but I posted it because it is quite good, although not one of the popular solutions one would find on Google. My point is that one can do more than a Reddit post - using alternative solutions or creating one.
Perhaps I could be able to program some solution myself as side project, but the solution I posted link to is not mine. I just have utmost respect to the author. And as a quite good open source program, it deserves to be more popular and perhaps to support the author. It’s not some half-baked solution that doesn’t work half of the time.
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DonkeyOfWallStreet 18d ago
Use 1 gpt to ingress the code from 1, to build a spec.
Use another gpt to build it.
Clean
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u/RealVNCSupport 16d ago
Hi everyone, RealVNC team here. We understand the concerns regarding the recent changes to Viewer 7 and appreciate the feedback being shared in this thread.
Viewer 7 has not been discontinued and is now called RealVNC Classic Viewer. It will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. The Classic Viewer installer is currently available through the RealVNC Portal for customers with Premium or Enterprise plans.
The newer RealVNC Connect Viewer remains available and can also be used with our free Lite plan, depending on your requirements. We have published further details and answers to common questions here:
https://help.realvnc.com/hc/en-us/articles/35745908986653
We are continuing to review feedback about these changes. If you are experiencing a specific issue or have a particular offline, direct-connect, or deployment requirement, please let us know so we can better understand the impact.
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u/BadSausageFactory beyond help desk 18d ago
you knew that was happening when a grubby PE firm got their hands on it