1) Remove the riff-raff, change ssh port (not necessary, it's just what I do) and set up hosts.allow for ssh
In my case (on RamNode's Wheezy OpenVZ template):
$ apt-get purge apache2* bind9 samba
$ vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config uncomment if necessary and change Port 22 to non-standard port
$ service ssh restart
$ vim /etc/hosts.allow
Add:
sshd: IPaddress_to_allow sshd: ALL: deny
2) Upgrade packages
$ apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
3) Add key for x2go-server
$ apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keys.gnupg.net E1F958385BFE2B6E
4) Create x2go repo:
vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/x2go.list
Add:
deb http://packages.x2go.org/debian wheezy main deb-src http://packages.x2go.org/debian wheezy main
$ apt-get update $ apt-get install x2go-keyring && apt-get update
5) Install iceweasel and xfce4
$ apt-get install xfce4 iceweasel
6) Add user
$ useradd -m my_username $ passwd my_username
7) Install x2goserver
$ apt-get install x2goserver*
8) Make sure x2goserver is running (should be already)
$ service x2goserver start
9) If you get perl errors about no or missing default locales then you can do:
$ locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
$ dpkg-reconfigure locales
$ service x2goserver restart
10) Download and install/configure x2goclient
Run x2goclient and create a new session, login is my_username, make sure to choose correct ssh port that you changed to. Choose XFCE for the session, you can set up keys here if you like, in the settings tab you can choose resolution, full screen, xinerama (for fullscreen display on second monitor, etc). Setting are all pretty self-explanatory.
11) Now login to your shiny xfce4 desktop on your 128M VPS, performance with x2goserver is miles ahead of vncserver, it runs over ssh.. Great alternative to nomachine NX, and much easier to setup, and might actually use less memory than NX.
Memory usage logged in to an 800x600 xfce4 desktop with x2goclient/x2goserver with iceweasel running (just one page google.com):
root@qb:~$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 128 114 13 0 0 50 -/+ buffers/cache: 64 63 Swap: 128 27 100