Remote Desktop PC to Mac (Not Screen Sharing)

Hi,

I have a headless mac and I want to remotely login in from my Windows machine (Note: I do not want to do screen sharing) I know this is possible from PC to PC, using Remote Desktop, it will take you to the login screen of another computer, and from Mac to PC. I was wondering if there was an equivalent from Mac to PC?

Also, I am reiterating that I do _not_ mean screen sharing, many people I have asked have gotten these two mixed up.

Thank you for your responses!

Fog Creek's Copilot is a web-based remote control service that is cross-platform. We ran an eval of various remote-assistance solutions and it seemed to work nicely. If I remember correctly, a remote session involves invitations or some kind of acknowledgment of the session form the client machine, so it might not work for your headless setup, but I might be wrong (the eval was some time back and I can't recall if it was Copilot or another service that required client acknowledgments).

While I'm at it, here's a link to our entire eval and the results.

The equivalent of Remote Desktop on the Mac is screen sharing. No, it is not the same as Windows RDC, but that is the "equivalent" functionality.

Instead of asking for "the equivalent of X," perhaps you might get better answers if you described in detail what functions you wanted.

technologist said:

The equivalent of Remote Desktop on the Mac is screen sharing. No, it is not the same as Windows RDC, but that is the "equivalent" functionality.

Instead of asking for "the equivalent of X," perhaps you might get better answers if you described in detail what functions you wanted.

Click to expand...

maybe it's just me, but that's basically what the OP asked for, and what's wrong with comparing to something that's already out there? the thing here is the solution needs to be OS independant (or at least work PC-to-Mac), the point wasn't to find other Mac software other than Screen Sharing

VNC, it's an option on OSX Server (as well as OSX regular)

for PC software:

RealVNC - RealVNC remote control software
TightVNC: VNC-Based Free Remote Control Solution

"But it's not secure" you say - ok - then:

setup a SSH session and SSH tunnel for VNC then you'll have the extra security you need.

here's a link that will lead you to a screencast on setup on the server (it's a bit of an old one, but you should be able to get enough information to make it work):

Mac Server Series: How to create an SSH tunnel for a secure VNC connection » Free Mac Blog

and on the pc you can setup a few things to create your side of the tunnel like:

putty ssh to tunnel the vnc, here's a link on how to do it: (old but still good - you can ignore the smoothwall aspect if you're sitting on the same network, or modify the instructions to fit your own firewall/router - plus you don't need to ssh to port 222, port 22 is the standard ssh port)

Smoothwall - Tunnelling VNC over SSH with PuTTY

or you can look for some other puttyssh vnc directions that may more fit your network model:

putty ssh vnc tunnel - Google Search

here's another tool you can use to setup a vnc over ssh tunnel:

ssvnc: SSL/SSH VNC viewer

+1 on the VNC route which is what I use. I use Hamachi to securely connect to my Mac..

Regards