• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

TurboVNC 2.2.x Window Manager Compatibility Report

The following window manager configurations have been tested either by us or by the TurboVNC community using the TurboVNC 2.2.x X server. If you know of any issues that are not described here, please submit a bug report. If you have information about other WM configurations, please contact us.

NOTE: The window manager startup script can be specified by using the TVNC_WM environment variable, the -wm argument to /opt/TurboVNC/bin/vncserver, or the $wm variable in /etc/turbovncserver.conf or ~/.vnc/turbovncserver.conf.

3D Window Managers

Some recent window managers (GNOME 3 and Unity, in particular) require OpenGL in order to run, and other window managers may optionally require OpenGL in order to enable desktop effects. The TurboVNC Server includes a software OpenGL implementation that can be used to run these window managers, but the performance will not be stellar. It is generally recommended that a 2D window manager, such as MATE or Xfce, be used with TurboVNC, but you can also improve the performance of 3D window managers by running them using VirtualGL (VirtualGL 2.4 or later required.) To enable this feature, pass an argument of -vgl to /opt/TurboVNC/bin/vncserver.

Persistent Screen Resolution

Many window managers provide an applet for specifying the screen resolution. This applet interacts with the X RANDR extension, and since that extension is fully supported in TurboVNC 2.0 and later, the built-in screen resolution applet in the window manager can be used to change the size of the TurboVNC desktop. However, it should be noted that, at least in the case of GNOME and KDE, setting the TurboVNC desktop size in this manner may cause the desktop size to persist when you launch a new TurboVNC session. This is because, when the screen resolution is changed using the screen resolution applet in GNOME and KDE, the applet stores the new value and attempts to set the screen resolution to that value the next time the window manager is launched (effectively circumventing the -geometry argument to vncserver.) Notes on the behavior of specific window managers are included below for reference: