Run Firefox over X11 over SSH / VNC on a cheap virtual machine

To run over SSH: Not

This is how to run a Firefox browser on a cheap VPS machine (e.g. a Google Cloud VM Instance) with an X-server connection. It’s actually not a good idea, because it’s extremely slow. The correct way is to set up a VNC server, because the X server connection exchanges information on every little mouse movement or screen update. It’s a disaster on a slow connection.

My motivation was to download a 10 GB file from Microsoft’s cloud storage. With my own Internet connection it failed consistently after a Gigabyte or so (I guess the connection timed out). So the idea is to have Firefox running on a remote server with a much better connection. And then transfer the file.

Since it’s a one-off task, and I kind-of like these bizarre experiments, here we go.

These steps:

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config, making sure it reads

X11Forwarding yes

Install xauth, also necessary to open a remote X:

# apt install xauth

Then restart the ssh server:

# systemctl restart ssh

and then install Firefox

# apt install firefox-esr

There will be a lot of dependencies to install.

At this point, it’s possible to connect to the server with ssh -X and run firefox on the remote machine.

Expect a horribly slow browser, though. Every small animation or mouse movement is transferred on the link, so it definitely gets stuck easily. So think before every single move, and think about every single little thing in the graphics that gets updated.

Firefox “cleverly” announces that “a web page is slowing down your browser” all the time, but the animation of these announcements become part of the problem.

It’s also a good idea to keep the window small, so there isn’t much to area to keep updated. And most important: Keep the mouse pointer off the remote window unless it’s needed there for a click. Otherwise things get stuck. Just gen into the window, click, and leave. Or stay if the click was for the sake of typing (or better, pasting something).

Run over VNC instead

This requires installing an X-Windows server. Not a big deal.

# apt update
# apt-get install xfce4
# apt install x-window-system

once installed, open a VNC window. It’s really easiest by clicking a button on the user’s VPS Client Area (also available on the control panel, but why go that far) and go

# startx

at command prompt to start the server. And then start the browser as usual.

It doesn’t make sense to have a login server as it slows down the boot process and eats memory. Unless a VNC connection is the intended way to always use the virtual machine.

Firefox is still quite slow, but not as bad as with ssh.