Show HN: ReFrame – Linux remote desktop that supports Login on Wayland/TTY
AlynxZhou Thursday, February 05, 2026Hi, in the past few months I make a new Linux remote desktop that supports remote login on Wayland as my part-time project. The reason is that existing Linux remote desktops have different problems about this: some only supports remote login on X11, some supports Wayland but you cannot login, some supports remote login on Wayland but only with RDP on specific desktop environment. On the contrary, mine uses VNC, supports remote login on both Wayland and X11, and should work with all general desktop environments.
The main idea is grabbing monitor content via DRM/KMS, and then I get the following features:
- Works with Wayland, X11 and even Linux TTY. - Supports Intel, AMD and NVIDIA GPU, even works with a Raspberry Pi 2B, I happen to have all those kinds of devices to test. - Smoothly transition between login session and user session, so you don't need things like auto-login before accessing your desktop. - With Linux kernel parameters, you can use it headlessly, so you don't need a actual monitor. - You can connect to it with any normal VNC clients, technically there should be no difficult to support RDP, just because I use VNC personally and I spend my time on other features.
The expected experience should be the same as you are sitting in front of your real monitor. I've use it on my Linux home server for a long time so I could access its desktop on a laptop when needed. Now I'm feeling OK with it and I want to introduce it to you to hear more from more users.
Welcome to the GitHub repo for details!