If you want to start a modern version of KDE, you can run startplasma-x11. So the trick is how to start the desktop? The Tunneling Desktop Plus, some programs really expect support from other services that a desktop environment like KDE starts. That’s fine, but it isn’t the entire desktop experience. That would run konsole on your Pi, but the screen appears on your main machine. The SSH programs also have to be configured to allow that, but that’s usually the default behavior. You can also configure that in the ssh config file ( ForwardX11 yes or ForwardX11Trusted yes) so you don’t have to type it in all the time. When you start ssh to the Pi, just include the -X or -Y option. If you haven’t done SSH tunneling before, don’t worry it is easy. It is easy to just run a single X program over SSH, and you’ve probably done that often. However, for this purpose, we are going to use SSH tunneling along with some special tricks to get the entire desktop running. There are many ways to remotely access X programs, many of which are rarely used today. But before we get there, let’s talk about how X11 has had a big identity crisis over the years. The same principle applies to most other desktop environments, but I am using KDE and Ubuntu on the Pi, even though something lighter would probably perform better. I’ll show you two ways to get a full graphical KDE desktop running with nothing more than a network connection. However, with the Raspberry Pi 4, I wanted to get to a desktop without fishing up a spare monitor. You can even set them up headless as long as you have an Ethernet cable or are willing to edit the SD card before you boot the machine for the first time. I have probably had an HDMI plug in a Pi only two or three times if you don’t count my media streaming boxes. But many of us use them as cheap Linux servers. Some people use them as little PCs or even laptops with a keyboard and screen connected.

It seems to me there are two camps when it comes to the Raspberry Pi.

Nomachine raspberry pi