TurboVNC is a high-performance, enterprise-quality version of VNC based on TightVNC, TigerVNC, and X.org.
TurboVNC contains a variant of Tight encoding that is tuned to maximize performance for image-intensive applications (such as VirtualGL, video applications, and image editors) while still providing excellent performance for other types of applications. TurboVNC, in combination with VirtualGL, provides a complete solution for remotely displaying 3D applications with interactive performance. TurboVNC’s high-speed encoding methods have been adopted by TigerVNC and libvncserver, and TurboVNC is also compatible with any other TightVNC derivative.
TurboVNC forked from TightVNC in 2004 and still covers all of the TightVNC 1.3.x features, but TurboVNC contains numerous feature enhancements and bug fixes relative to TightVNC, and it compresses 3D and video workloads much better than TightVNC while using generally only 5-20% of the CPU time of the latter. Using non-default settings, TurboVNC can also be made to compress 2D workloads as “tightly” as TightVNC.
Features include:
- Fine-grained control over the JPEG image quality and level of chrominance subsampling.
- Double buffering on the client side to reduce tearing artifacts in 3D and video applications.
- Flexible and configurable full-screen/multi-screen support.
- Full support for IPv6.
- Advanced flow control and continuous updates (greatly improves performance on high-latency connections).
- Authentication with one-time passwords or Unix login credentials (in addition to standard VNC passwords).
- Access control lists (for sharing VNC sessions with only certain users).
- Allows security/authentication policies to be set globally for a particular server machine.
- Multithreaded encoding.
- “Lossless refresh” allows a viewer to request a lossless copy of the current screen image, either manually or automatically (after a specified number of seconds of inactivity).
- High-performance zero-install Java viewer, deployable using Java Web Start, that calls libjpeg-turbo through JNI to achieve native levels of performance.
Website: turbovnc.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: D. R. Commander
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
TurboVNC is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Remote Display Clients | |
|---|---|
| TigerVNC | Platform-neutral implementation of VNC |
| Remmina | GTK+/Gnome Remote Desktop Client |
| X2Go | Fast terminal server suite based on NoMachine's NX libraries |
| RustDesk | Works out of the box with no configuration required |
| Veyon | Computer monitoring and classroom management |
| TurboVNC | TightVNC-compatible remote desktop software |
| FreeRDP | Remote Desktop Protocol Implementation |
| TightVNC | Client/server allowing remote network access to graphical desktops |
| Connections | Aims at replacing Vinagre as the remote desktop client for GNOME |
| Xpra | Multi-platform persistent remote display server with built-in HTML5 client |
| Dayon! | Easy to use, cross-platform remote desktop assistance solution |
| HopToDesk | Remote desktop tool with end-to-end encryption |
| KRDC | Connect with RDP or VNC to another computer |
| Field Monitor | Remote desktop client designed for GNOME |
| Vinagre | VNC client for the Gnome Desktop |
| rdesktop | Client for Windows Terminal Services |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Remote Desktop Servers | |
|---|---|
| TigerVNC | Platform-neutral implementation of VNC |
| X2Go | Fast terminal server suite based on NoMachine's NX libraries |
| RustDesk | Works out of the box with no configuration required |
| TurboVNC | TightVNC-compatible remote desktop software |
| FreeRDP | Remote Desktop Protocol Implementation |
| TightVNC | Remote network access to graphical desktops |
| xrdp | Accepts connections from variety of RDP clients |
| Xpra | Multi-platform persistent remote display server |
| Guacamole | Clientless remote desktop gateway |
| OpenSSH | Encrypted communication sessions using the ssh protocol |
| Veyon | Computer monitoring and classroom management |
| IronRDP | Rust implementation of RDP |
| GNOME Remote Desktop | Designed for GNOME using pipewire. |
| Dayon! | Easy to use, cross-platform remote desktop assistance solution |
| Lamco RDP Server | Wayland-native RDP server for Linux |
| hypr-rdp | Native RDP server for Hyprland |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |