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1.2.90 (2.0 beta1)

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@dcommander dcommander released this 30 Jul 00:33
2.0beta1
2751021

Assets

  • turbovnc-1.2.90.tar.gz is the official source tarball for this release. The automatically generated "Source code" assets are not supported.
  • Refer to https://TurboVNC.org/Downloads/DigitalSignatures for information regarding the methods used to sign the files in this release and instructions for verifying the signatures.
  • The binary packages were built with libjpeg-turbo 1.4.0.

Support

Code Quality: Beta
Current Support Category: EOL

Documentation

User’s Guide for TurboVNC 2.0 (Beta)

Release Notes

Significant changes relative to 1.2.3:

  1. The TurboVNC X server has been completely overhauled and is now based on the unmodified Xorg 7.7 code base. This overhaul enables support for the X extensions needed by newer window managers (RANDR 1.2, Composite, XFIXES, Damage, etc.) In addition, the keyboard handler has been completely overhauled and now uses the XKEYBOARD extension. This fixes key mapping issues that occurred when running TurboVNC with certain versions of GNOME (previously, it was necessary to set an environment variable in xstartup.turbovnc to work around those issues.)

  2. Added the ability to dynamically resize the remote desktop, either through the X RANDR extension on the server or remotely from a VNC viewer that supports the RFB desktop size extensions. Both TurboVNC viewers now also include an "automatic desktop resize" feature that will resize the remote desktop so that it always fits exactly in the viewer window without using scrollbars. A new max-desktop-size directive is provided in the TurboVNC security configuration file in order to allow a maximum desktop size to be specified for all TurboVNC sessions on a given host.

  3. The X11 TurboVNC Viewer has been retired and replaced with the Java TurboVNC Viewer. The X11 viewer will continue to be maintained in the 1.2.x branch on a break/fix basis only. The Java viewer provides similar performance to the X11 viewer when remotely displaying 3D application workloads to a reasonably modern client machine.

  4. The Java TurboVNC Viewer, when run as an applet, can now be displayed to an embedded frame in a web page rather than a dedicated window. This restores a feature of the TurboVNC 1.1 Java viewer that was lost in 1.2. Full-screen mode and scaling do not work when the viewer is run as an embedded applet.

  5. vncconnect now uses the VNC X extension to establish a reverse connection, rather than setting a root window property on the VNC X server. This makes TurboVNC's implementation of vncconnect compatible with RealVNC and TigerVNC servers, and the return status of vncconnect now reflects whether the reverse connection was successfully made. vncconnect also now has a -disconnect option, which can be used to disconnect all listening viewers.

  6. Since Apple is discontinuing their distribution of Java in favor of Oracle's (which doesn't work on Snow Leopard and earlier), we now provide two Mac packages-- one that works with Leopard and later and uses Apple's version of Java, and one that works with Lion and later and uses the Oracle Java plug-in.

  7. When running in listen mode, the Java TurboVNC Viewer now displays a tray icon with a popup menu similar to that of the Windows native viewer. This allows the listener to be shut down, for global options to be set for all connections, and for new forward connections to be made without using the command line or launching another viewer instance.

  8. The default xstartup.turbovnc script that the TurboVNC Server creates will now properly launch the GNOME fallback window manager on Ubuntu 14.04, if 3D window manager support is not activated.

  9. Interframe comparison and Compression Level 2 can now be selected in the TurboVNC Viewer GUI. Also, a new command-line option/parameter (CompatibleGUI) can now be used to force the GUI to expose all 10 compression levels (useful when connecting to non-TurboVNC servers.)

  10. The interframe comparison feature now compares large framebuffer update rectangles on a block-by-block basis, which prevents the entire rectangle from being sent if only a small portion of it has changed. The default block size is 256x256 but can be changed using the TVNC_ICEBLOCKSIZE environment variable (for instance, TVNC_ICEBLOCKSIZE=128 would use 128x128 blocks.)

  11. By default, the embedded HTTP server in the TurboVNC Server will now serve up a JNLP (Java Web Start) file for the session instead of an applet. You can add /applet to the URL to instruct the HTTP server to serve up an applet instead. The official TurboVNC packages for Linux also include the native JAR files necessary to deliver the libjpeg-turbo JNI library to Windows, Linux, and OS X clients (when using Java Web Start.)

  12. vncconnect can now be used to connect a TurboVNC session to an instance of the UltraVNC Repeater in Mode II.

  13. The Via and Tunnel parameters in the Java TurboVNC Viewer (which allow specifying an SSH or UltraVNC Repeater gateway through which the VNC connection should be tunneled) can now be configured using the Options dialog.

  14. On Un*x/X11 platforms, a small JNI library (turbovnchelper) is now deployed alongside the Java TurboVNC Viewer in order to work around full-screen mode deficiencies in Java (specifically, under certain window managers, the taskbars would appear on top of the full-screen window.) Because the turbovnchelper library depends on libjawt.so, it is unfortunately not easy to deploy it using Java Web Start, so it is currently only used when the viewer is launched as a standalone application (using the vncviewer script.)

  15. The NoNewConn parameter in the Java TurboVNC Viewer will now disable the "Close Connection" option in the F8 menu and the "Disconnect" button in the toolbar as well (useful for web portals, particularly when using the new embedded applet mode.)

  16. On Un*x/X11 platforms, the Java TurboVNC Viewer can now grab the keyboard when run as a standalone application. This allows special key sequences, such as Alt-Tab, to be sent to the server. The pointer can also be optionally grabbed, which allows special keyboard + pointer sequences (such as Alt-{drag}), to be sent to the server as well. This feature requires the aforementioned TurboVNC Helper library.

  17. The Java TurboVNC Viewer will now offer an option to reconnect if the connection fails for any reason.

  18. The Windows native TurboVNC Viewer no longer exposes the Double Buffering option in its Options dialog. The option was removed mainly to make room for the Desktop Size combo box, but also, single buffering is rarely used and is mostly a legacy feature. Double buffering can still be disabled via the /singlebuffer command-line switch or by specifying doublebuffer=0 in a VNC connection file.

  19. /etc/turbovncserver-auth.conf (the "authentication configuration file") has been renamed to /etc/turbovncserver-security.conf (the "security configuration file") to reflect the fact that it allows configuration of more than just authentication methods.

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