Remote (cross platform) control through ethernet cable?

[fekioh]

Hi,

I have laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 and I'm looking at a mini mac.

I would like to operate it remotely (it has no screen/keyboard/mouse of its own) but not through the internet. Could I connect the two locally through an ethernet cable and then control the mac from the laptop using some desktop sharing system like, say, VNC?

If anyone out there has any advice for doing this I would appreciate the help!

Cheers

[caperjack]

what do you mean by control, .

[fekioh]

Hi,

I mean to use a remote-desktop like system, where I will be able to see the mac-mini screen in my laptop and control it with the laptop's keyboard/mousepad.

For example, using VNC, it seems possible to connect to the second computer using its IP address:

http://blog.coultard.com/2012/04/remote-desktopvnc-to-mac-from-pc-and.html#comment-form

However, I would prefer to do it via a direct ethernet connection between the 2 computers.

[L7Sqr]

In general, Ethernet is the medium over which your relevant data is carried (there is a protocol for this that includes frames). You write a protocol that is carried over Ethernet and use that to communicate your data.
IP is a natural way to do this since most applications support this natively (it is the default in most cases). There is nothing preventing you from assigning IP addresses to these two machines and using teh VNC software over that. The most you may have to do is set up routing rules and assign a static IP address - neither of these things is terribly difficult.