(Responding to Carl but not quoting his message for brevity.) Regarding SuSE, I am sitting at a SuSE box with a pretty late build: Linux _____ 3.16.7-35-default #1 SMP Sun Feb 7 17:32:21 UTC 2016 (832c776) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux It does have (Tiger)Vnc, but not the x11vnc package. I did not know that x11vnc does a "screen scrape" to the X server without having hooks into privileged user space (which it may well have). Up to a few years ago, the VNC that was shipped for use with the Xserver had to have an X server module loaded in the X11R6 or Xorg conf file (called "vnc") that allowed for this functionality. In the same box I looked and found this: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-libvnc.conf It has the vnx module as a loadable option; looks like this: #Section "Module" # Load "vnc" #EndSection What I am suggesting to Mr Coleman is to see if there is a vnc module in his Ubuntu X server installation. Use that first if you can. This does not involve Xvnc, etc, which is what you are probably using (you did not provide details). A user can scrape the screen if they own the display, and I wrote a code that does exactly that (I call it "Xleach"). If you want it, email me. My Slackware systems use a different setup: /usr/lib64/libvncclient.so.0.0.0 /usr/lib64/libvncserver.so.0.0.0 /usr/lib64/libvncclient.so.0 /usr/lib64/libvncclient.la /usr/lib64/libvncclient.so /usr/lib64/libvncserver.so /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/libvncclient.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/libvncserver.pc /usr/lib64/libvncserver.so.0 /usr/lib64/libvncserver.la /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9 /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/ChangeLog /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/README /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/TODO /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/COPYING /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/INSTALL /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/NEWS /usr/doc/libvncserver-0.9.9/AUTHORS /usr/bin/linuxvnc /usr/bin/SDLvncviewer /usr/bin/libvncserver-config /var/log/packages/libvncserver-0.9.9-x86_64-2 If you are an Ubuntu user, you probably do not want to go there. I have not played with Runge's x11vnc that Carl suggested, but it looks like a simple a solid solution of the bare-bones type that I like. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/ I hope all this stuff is helpful to you.