Can I use my Ubuntu-computer as a second screen for my OS X-computer via Wi-fi?

Question

Now, that's one heck of a title.

Anyway. This is what I want to do.

I have:

(a) a MacBook with OS X

and

(b) a crappy old computer with Ubuntu

What I would like to do is to use computer (b) as a second screen for computer (a). Unfortunately, computer (b) only has a s-video-input and my MacBook only has a mini-DP-output. I'm pretty sure these two won't play.

So, my thought was that I should be able to connect the two via the Wi-fi network. I've already tested, and successfully run, a remote desktop session between the two, running the built-in software on (b) and "Chicken of the VNC" on (a).

So, my question is: can I do what I want to do? In that case; can anyone point me in the right direction?

Solution

I would suggest looking into Screen Recycler. Run it on your mac, and then your ubuntu machine would connect to it using any of the available vnc clients. It is not going to be super fast even on WiFi, but text and images should be fine.

Comments

[LOlliffe]

Nice question. Just so you know, you didn't need Chicken of the VNC on the Mac. Mac OS X has a built in VNC Client. In finder go to: Connect To Server option, and as URL you can use: vnc://IP_ADDRESS:5901

[Speldosa]

Thank you. That actually worked. Altough, worked may be somewhat of an overkill here. It was SLOW. No, really slow! I don't think I understood how slow it was going to be until I saw it. I'm thinking of trying it witt a network cable plugged in between the two machines.

[Alex]

You may be able to speed it up by using some of the other encoding options, but vnc is slow in general as that it is pumping binary pictures of the screen rather than some ascii representation of what is happening underneath. You might want to take a look at NoMachine NX to see if that is faster.