Indeed. And the link I provided does explain how to get a VNC virtual desktop with minimal desktop software.
OP will need to determine if that's sufficient or if they want the actual full RPi desktop. That can also be done, of course, as you pointed out, but I think it's incorrect to assume that one needs the "entire desktop" without the OP weighing in.
Appologies for treading on your toes.
The point I was trying to make to the OP was that more than just tigervnc is required and that even with vnc the desktop and any applications are still going to run on the Pi. Which doesn't meet their requirement of "without running any actual GUI on the PI"
By "entire desktop" I meant users choice of X11+window manager or Wayland+compositor, fonts, cursor, icons, and required tools not the fully customised RPiOS desktop environment. I guess I could have been clearer.
If they really don't want to run a desktop GUI on the Pi they need to learn how to run an X server on their PC and how to use X11 forwarding over ssh (or how to use the insecure X11 over TCP method). But that's slightly non-trivial and gets to be more work if OP needs more than a few applications. Though it is what I use.
Statistics: Posted by thagrol — Fri Jan 23, 2026 10:48 pm