RealVNC - History

History

RealVNC Ltd. was founded by Andy Harter (CEO) and other members of the original VNC team at AT&T. For a desktop to desktop connection RealVNC runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and many Unix-like operating systems. A RealVNC client also runs on the Java platform and on the Apple iPhone, iPod touch and iPad and Google Android devices. A Windows-only client, VNC Viewer Plus is now available, designed to interface to the embedded server on Intel AMT chipsets found on Intel vPro motherboards.

For remote access to view one computer desktop on another, RealVNC comes in one of three editions:

  1. Open Edition (formerly "Free Edition") – free registration and activation required, open source version distributed under the GNU General Public License; runs on various flavors of Unix (Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) and versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista (i.e. Windows NT 4, 2000, XP, Server 2003), newer Windows operating systems must use the Personal or Enterprise editions. Note that users who wish to use this free version, as supplied by the realvnc.com site, may need (for example) to patch and compile the XFree86 source code by themselves, as the free binaries available for download are outdated and typically fail to operate in modern environments. Fortunately, almost all Linux distributions include an updated/customised version of the RealVNC free edition. For example, in Debian and its derivatives, the RealVNC server and client appear under the packages named vnc4server and xvnc4viewer, respectively. (Until June 2012, the opensource "Free Edition 4.1.3" was downloadable without any registration at realvnc.com. As of June 2012, the "free edition 4.1.3" has been renamed to "open edition 4.1.3" and now requires a registration at realvnc.com. There is also a new "Free Edition 5.x" that requires a "free licence key".)
  2. Personal Edition – commercial version geared towards home or small-business users, with authentication and encryption, remote printing, chat and file transfer; only runs on Windows.
  3. Enterprise Edition – commercial version geared towards enterprises, with enhanced authentication and encryption, remote printing, chat, file transfer and a deployment tool for Windows; runs on Windows, Mac OS X and various flavours of Linux and UNIX.

As of release 4.3 (released August 2007) separate versions of both the Personal and Enterprise editions exist for 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The (as of 2010) latest release (4.6) includes features such as HTTP proxy support, chat, an address book, remote printing, unicode support, and connection notification.

Each of the server versions ("Free", "Personal", "Enterprise") must be activated.

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