If you are connecting to the remote desktop running on an older version of Fedora, when the desktop appears you may notice that it doesn’t look much like the standard desktop:

The problem here is that we need to configure the VNC session to launch the correct desktop. To do this shutdown the VNC desktop session as follows:

vncserver -kill :1

Next go to your home folder and edit the .vnc/xstartup file. This will look similar to the following file:

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80×24+10+10 -ls -title “$VNCDESKTOP Desktop” &
twm &

To configure this startup script to launch the standard desktop (known as the GNOME desktop) change the twm& line so that the file reads:

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80×24+10+10 -ls -title “$VNCDESKTOP Desktop” &
unset SESSION_MANAGER
gnome-session &

Restart the vncserver:

vncserver :1 -extension XFIXES

Finally, reconnect from the remote system. The full desktop should now appear in the VNC viewer or Vinagre window.