Remove Real VNC from RaspberryPi Pixel and install TightVNC

I came across my old shortcut on my windows machine to vnc onto the Pi which prompted me to have a go connecting to my new RaspberryPi3.

I duly fired it up only to receive an error message along the lines of 'No configured security type is supported'. After a bit of research it turns out that RealVNC has upped their security protocols and TightVNC is no longer cross-compatible.

No probs I thought - juust install the RealVNC viewer on my windows pc and give it a crack that way. I've never really been a fan of RealVNC, but you know it's been over a decade now and I'm not that set in my ways that I can't change so I installed it to see whats new.

Turns out there a lot new! Some crappy licensing scheme whereby you have to sign into an account through their website before you vnc onto anything. This is not a grteat user experience and it's not in the RaspberryPi's way of doing things eother. So it has to go.

Remove RealVNC

If you want to do away with it also, just follow these instructions, in terminal or over SSH:

dpkg --get-selections | grep vnc

this will show you what the name of the package is you need to install, then un-install it:

sudo apt-get remove realvnc-vnc-server

Install TightVNC

Then we can move on to getting tightvnc installed

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

then run it to configure it

tightvncserver

once you've set up some options/passwords it will then start an instance for you, we'll go ahead and kill it then start up a new one with a better/your own resolution

vncserver -kill :1
vncserver :1 -geometry 1024x1024 -depth 24

Connect

you can now connect using the hostname/ip of your pi from your viewer

raspberrypi3:1

Autostart

to start the server everytime you boot your pi, you can do the following:

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

then type in

echo "Starting VNC server on port 5901"
sudo -u pi tightvncserver :1

ctrl+o, enter and ctrl+x to save and exit.