[Update: 13.0.6634] Christmas Update

DanielStm
DanielStm Posts: 224 Staff member 🤠

TeamViewer 13 for Linux - Christmas editionTeamViewer 13 for Linux - Christmas edition

Dear Linux community,

today we are releasing our Christmas update for TeamViewer 13. Before going into details, on the behalf our my team, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused to some of you who missed key functionality in the previous release. To make this apology not only words, we decided to squeeze in an extra release before the next one planned for January.

Perception of the initial TeamViewer 13 for Linux releasePerception of the initial TeamViewer 13 for Linux releaseFortunately we have this community, which allows us to get feedback and react quickly. During the last months we were focused on improving the situation with Wayland and had to learn the hard way that Ctrl+Alt+Del is much more important to some of you.
Still, even with missing features, the majority of our users seems to appreciate the general direction we are going with the Wine-less, native TeamViewer with true 64 bit support and repositories. We hope you'll like it even more with this release.

What's New? — A Quick Overview

  • toolbar with Ctrl+Alt+Del, switch screen
  • Partner ID visible in remote control window title
  • search filter for Computers & Contacts
  • more connection modes
  • (limited) support for Debian 8 is back
  • TAR package can now (again) be used without installation
  • improved teamviewer setup

Remote Control
remote control toolbarremote control toolbarWorking on many machines, you can now tell on which one you are from the window title. And of course, there is the toolbar. Initially, it supports Ctrl+Alt+Del, remote lock, remote reboot, remote sign out, show remote cursor, and switch screens.
The remote cursor is the one as seen on the remote side, which is handy if somebody wants to show you something on the other side. Additionally, the local cursor takes the shape of the remote cursor.

Please let us know what you like or dislike about the toolbar and its behavior. The toolbar tries hard to not be in your way: It's slim, transparent and you can move it all the way to the screen edges. Too slim? Too big? Would you rather have a ribbon-style toolbar as on Windows? Share your thoughts! It's your chance to get the toolbar that exactly suits your needs.
Of course, more tools will also be added. Top candidates are: show black screen, disable remote input and session recording.

Computers & Contacts
device selectiondevice selectionThe most commonly used ways to initiate connections are now supported. By password, by password stored in your account, via easy access, or by prompting the other side for confirmation (via context menu).
Also, the dearly missed filter is now there.
When connecting to an account that is active on multiple machines, there is now a selection dialog. As on Windows, but cuter. :robotvery-happy:

TAR Package, Unofficial Ports, Setup
The TAR package can now (again) be used without installation. Just make sure that all dependencies are installed by running ./tv-setup checklibs once. Due to the short-term release there are minor caveats: Presence of Qt QuickControls is not verified by checklibs. The UI offers 'start with system' which has no effect and the tray icon is transparent/invisible (but usable). This will be addressed timely.
Of course, you can also install the TAR package with ./tv-setup. In that case, only the checklibs limitation applies.
Installing the TAR package is especially useful on non-DEB/RPM systems.
Speaking of other systems: Community member Maxxim has created ebuilds for Gentoo, and there also seems to be some work going on in the Arch universe.

The commandline teamviewer setup to assign a device to your account should now work as it used to. (Account assignment is also available in the options dialog)

Limited Debian 8 support
As per popular demand, limited Debian 8 support is back. It's a bit tricky as we cannot even use all features of Qt 5.2, as they are buggy (in a crashy way) on Debian 8. Therefore, please consider this a best-effort support. We will definitely switch to Qt 5.5 in a few months. Depending on user demand and feasibility, we might provide compatibility libraries.

Future Development
Most requested featuresMost requested featuresWe have adapted our development goals to the results of the survey and other valuable feedback by our users. After a much needed break over the christmas holidays we will focus on file transfer, chat and mobile device support. What is done in time will be in the next release, end of January.

Known Issues
Due to the short development cycle, we could not tackle all known issues. On some systems, menus/dialogs/tooltips have invisible text. Using a different desktop (theme) can work around this. Some keys are not properly handled when connecting to macOS. If TeamViewer does not start on SUSE, one has to install libqt5-qtquickcontrols manually. On DEB systems, apt update spits out some warnings.

Further reading:
State of Wayland & TeamViewer
CentOS & RedHat
Previous Release Announcement

As always, packages are available via repositories and on the TeamViewer Linux download page.

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!
Daniel

Linux Developer
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Comments

  • garyg
    garyg Posts: 3

    Thanks, this is a very welcome patch! I am functional again!

  • Thank you so much! This is awesome! Thanks for the fast update and the new features!

  • Thanks for the update, working OK on Ubuntu 17.04. One thing I have noticed is that I cannot collapse groups of computers; I have 106 online devices which means that my Computers & Contacts needs to be unnecessarily large or there's lots of scrolling to do. There are carats on each group but clicking them does nothing.
  • zeroconf
    zeroconf Posts: 8 ✭✭

    * SSH keys should be supported: RSA, Ed25519 (elliptic curve) and also with maximum strength (RSA: 16384-bit via ssh-keygen - should support as much as ssh-keygen can do in future; Ed25519 can change the KDF value (-a parameter, default 16 but should support as much as ssh-keygen can do in future))

  • zeroconf
    zeroconf Posts: 8 ✭✭

    * in Linux part the remote terminal would be appreciated to make possible to open - especially when authenticating over SSH but not only - this should work so that locally will be opened the default terminal (x-terminal-emulator) but with remote command-line.

    This means that if there has been authenticated with SSH key or just remote computer has OpenSSH server installed then it can open remote terminal via SSH locally - it would be like logging in via SSH.

    Not only means that if it could be possible then make such remote terminal possible also without having SSH server in remote computer. This could be done e.g. having Teleconsole or similar integrated into Teamviewer. More information - https://www.teleconsole.com/ - this would be very nice if remote console could work transparently inside Teamviewer!

    There could be also view-only remote console, e.g. using shellshare or similar - https://shellshare.net/

  • zeroconf
    zeroconf Posts: 8 ✭✭

    Some ideas for toolbar in case of Linux there would be appreciated to add:

    • CTRL+ALT+Backspace - kill GUI (X server) and restart it again
    • CTRL+ALT+F1...F6 - make possible to switch GUI->CLI
    • ALT+F7 - make possible to switch CLI->GUI
    • ALT+F1...F6 - make possible to switch CLI virtual consoles
    • CTRL+ALT+ESC - some Linux distros allow this as xkill alternative

    Basically it would be great to be able to send custom key to remote computer.

  • zeroconf
    zeroconf Posts: 8 ✭✭

    Yet another idea: send command(s) or also script with commands to remote computer(s). This means either one or more computers simultaneously. Also this would be appreciated to do using SSH key installed remotely under root user and also it will require the OpenSSH server installed on every remote computer. So defining a key file for specific user (e.g. also root user) per computer or group of computers at once would be appreciated. Such command sending would be appreciated without opening the remote computer view via Teamviewer - just send the command(s) or (e.g. bash, etc) script with commands. There would be appreciated to send also message before and after running the sent command(s) or script, e.g. using libnotify on remote computer. This would be especially useful while people are working on computer. Therefore it would be even better to set a time after first message when the command(s) or script will be executed to give a time to finish activities for user on remote computer. Also would be good to configure command(s) or script after running the main command(s) or script. This could be called like pre- and post- command(s) or script. This could be also an idea - give a message (warning) that after x minutes, seconds etc will start computer updating (repairing etc) and then screen will be locked for user and activities can start. Also as a next option it would be good to make possible to log current user out, possibly also all other users and then run the main command(s) or script e.g. using specific user (root or any other user in sudo group who has SSH public key installed on remote computer).

  • mozo
    mozo Posts: 28 ✭✭

    Thanks for the good work!

    I have one problem - all the computers in Contacts are always shown as online. Is this a known issue? Excuse me if that is already mentioned

  • ndit
    ndit Posts: 9 ✭✭

    Thank you very much for this update, the search and ctrl+alt+delete alone will get me a  long way into be able to use the native linux version for many of my connections from my xubuntu workstation.

    The single most important feature needed for me right now, is to be able to see QuickSupport sessions in my C&C in linux, clients starting my QuickSupport client right now, cannot be seen in linux C&C, nor can i connect to them.

    There are of course alot of other features, that would be nice to have, and might be very important for other user cases. But with the ability to connect to quicksupport sessions would take me personally a long way to be able to use native linux TV as my daily way of using TV (using a windows VM today).

    About the toolbar
    I like it, slim, simple, not in the way. You migh need to be more creative in the future when many more features are implemented. Like grouping or somthing along that line. For my daily usage, I use: ctrl+alt+del, remote resolution, show remote cursor, chat, file transfer. in that order, is the ones I use.

    The following features are the ones I miss, but are not essential for my daily usage.

    - Remote resultiotion - can be quite convinient when connecting to some windows servers without monitor, wich often reset to 1024*768 as standard resolution when not in use. The same is true when connecting to clients with 4K-monitors from a computer with 1920*1xxx. This is quite easily workaround, but I use it almost daily on my windows/mac boxes.

    - File transfer - I don't use it that often, but from time to time, and when i need it, other ways of performing file transfers can be used as a workaround. But I'm sure other users have this on the top of their lists as an important feature.

    - Further improved C&C - Collapsing, offline computers grayed out, be able to edit/add/sort computers.

    - Chat - Personally, I'm usually on the phone with my clients when we need to communicate, but it's a very convinient way of communication with the costumer from time to time.

    - Timing out inactive sessions - I work from different places, if i forget to close a connection made from my office computer. I cannot use teamviewer on my laptop until I go back to the office and close that connection (just have a one channel license).

     

  • franzbischoff
    franzbischoff Posts: 2 ✭✭

    Missing important feature: change resolution. Some screens are too big and appear too small on TeamViewer.

    Thank you.

  • I have a Quick Support module that is supposed to show all computers that download it in a shared contacts folder. Right now it works great on Windows and Mac, but nothing shows up in Linux. Is this a known bug? Is there a fix for it right now, or is it coming in an update?

    Thanks,

    Ian

  • CPU usage of 13 on Linux as a viewer is *definitely* much-reduced compared to 12.
  • mozo
    mozo Posts: 28 ✭✭

    Missing vital feature: There isn't middle click. It isn't urgent but is very important :)

  • No one has still said it but an important feature is missing for me: access using Windows login information. I use admin credentials instead of Teamviewer password when connecting to computers of windows users without admin privileges; otherwise, the UAC freezes the screen for TeamViewer.

  • franzbischoff
    franzbischoff Posts: 2 ✭✭

    Also, I can't use Latin characteres!!! Ç ã Á and others

  • Rob79
    Rob79 Posts: 1

    I have one issues, which is hard to deal with:

    connecting to osx machines, a lot of keys give me a "a" character

    e.g arrow keys, page up, page down, delete and some other special keys

    The problem does not exist when connecting to windows machines

  • -_-
    -_- Posts: 1

    WHERE DID THE FULLSCREEN OPTION GO!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?

  • Thanks for the update :-)

    I miss screen resolution and also full screen.

    Regards Bjørnar

  • Well ... there is no simple copy/paste function?  (from windows to linux)

  • No resolution change

    No full screen

    Mouse lagging (I see a double mouse in remote screen, have not noticed it in wine version)

  • Where is File Transfer in the menu bar of version 13?

    Is there another way to access it?

    Thanks,

    Fabian

  • Although Ver. 13.0.6634 looks great in Windows. It does not work at all in Linux Mint 18.3 for a lot of people I know and me (grayed out users and can do nothing). It's really not ready for prime time. In all the years I've used TeamViewer. Windows aside... I have never had the problem like I have with TeamViewer Ver.13 and with no matter what version of Mint. 13 should have been left in the beta stage and not shown to the public only a beta team until it was working on the Linux side.

  • AG
    AG Posts: 4

    Good works guys but I will stay with the last TV version 12.0.90041 for the next few months until you stabilize the situation.

    I use Linux mint 18.3 mate 64 bits with Virtualbox and I can use  TV 13.0.6634 on it (with Windows 10 as a guest). I can see that I can use 2 differents GUI maybe to feel the difference between them, I don't know! But it's good way to experiment those two GUI. Actually, I like the old one but I will keep on the experience between both of them. Thanks

  • zeroconf
    zeroconf Posts: 8 ✭✭

    Chat seems to be missing. Quite hard to start remote management if not agreed before.

  • File transfer is missing as well... (or hidden somewere).

    I am not happy with the new GUI so far...

  • KD1
    KD1 Posts: 1

    Does not work at all on Debian GNU/Linux 8.

    Fully broken and unuseable. I realy apreciate your work on bringen a native version to GNU/Linux but facing those bugs there should be a also a wine based version till all those bugs are fixed.

    • Passing password with the password parameter does not work
    • Remote User gets not prompt to permit the session
    • Remote view is just black
    • Password gets stored wrong
    • Password promt opens on the wrong head  (Multi head)
  • When i try to connect to a win machine from linux mint, all i get is a black screen. (with newest TV13)