Meet GNOME Connections, a Modern Remote Desktop Client for the GNOME Desktop

GNOME Connections

GNOME developer Felipe Borges announced today a new app called “Connections,” which will be part of an upcoming GNOME desktop environment release.

GNOME Connections is a new app that aims to be a modern remote desktop client for the GNOME desktop environment. Th app takes advantage of the VNC (Virtual Network Client) and RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) standards and lets users connect to remote machines.

The GNOME desktop suite already shipped with a remote desktop client, called Vinagre, but GNOME Connections is designed to replace it in future releases of the popular desktop environment. As such, Vinagre will not be getting any new features and will soon be retired.

Compared to Vinagre, GNOME Connections has a modern interface and follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and it’s easier to maintain. The app is currently designed to work with the remote connection features in GNOME Boxes, which will later be removed too, probably in GNOME 3.40.

“It basically has the same code base as GNOME Boxes for the protocol/display specific code, so you will likely get the same experience as with remote connections in Boxes today,” said developer Felipe Borges.

For now, GNOME Connections is in early stages of development, but the developers plans to add more advanced remote connection features to it. The first stable release is planned for later this fall alongside the upcoming GNOME 3.38 desktop environment, due for release on September 16th, 2020.

Until then, if you want to help the developer sort out bugs or add new features, you can always download and install GNOME Connection as a Flatpak from Flathub.

Images: GNOME/Felipe Borges

Last updated 4 years ago

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