Selfhosted

Since you're on Fedora + Linux only (so no TeamViewer/AnyDesk-style proprietary clients), here's how I'd map your criteria:

For the mum's Fedora desktop (the GUI/screen case):

• Rustdesk — open source, browser-ish clients (there's a web client), self-hostable relay. Fedora Wayland support has matured a lot; for the locked-screen problem you need to enable autologin on the target (Wayland logind screen locks are what block most tools) or use a greeter-level unlock. If you control her machine, just setting autologin + a locked wallet/bios is the practical answer every remote tool needs anyway.
• Apache Guacamole is the true "browser-only, self-hosted" answer: it proxies VNC/RDP/SSH through a web page. On Fedora run xrdp (RDP backend) + Guacamole in Docker, and you get full desktop-in-browser even on the lock screen (RDP sessions get their own login prompt — no unlock problem at all). This directly solves your "can't access the screen if not unlocked" complaint.

For headless servers (keep what you have):

• DWService's real value in your setup is the out-of-band rescue path. The open equivalent people pair it with is Tailscale as the always-on layer + SSH — Tailscale's free tier needs no open ports and works when your VPN/reverse proxy is dead because it IS the VPN, coordinating via their hosted control plane (or self-host Headscale if you want zero third party).
• Your worry about "reverse proxy/VPN crashes and I can't reach the machines" is the right one — the standard answer is a separate out-of-band path: a cheap ESP32/Pi on the same LAN running Tailscale (or a phone hotspot + Tailscale on a USB stick), so the rescue path shares no components with the primary path. That single rule fixes 95% of lockouts.

My honest recommendation: Guacamole for the human-usable browser desktop (RDP backend → lock screens stop mattering), Tailscale + SSH for everything headless, and one tiny always-on rescue node that can't fail with the main infra.

https://guacamole.apache.org/

why don't you want to open an ssh port? what's wrong with that?

just disable password authentication, and maybe get fail2ban. am i missing something?

For remote access I use two solutions that both have the features your looking for.

The first one which I have used for longer than I can remember is MeshCentral https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

This one works great, is web based, let's you access a shell, or you can make port tunnels been agents, access RDP or vnc in the web UI, the file system etc.

it's a really great one stop shop that more than covers what you're looking for.

The second is RustDesk https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk with the betterdesk server and web UI https://github.com/UNITRONIX/BetterDesk

This one scratched my TeamViewer itch and weekend pretty well. It's newer than MeshCentral and not as easy to setup however on top of the web client it's got apps which in my opinion provide a better experience for remote desktop access than MeshCentrals novnc client especially around copy paste.

All in all, of your looking for something ultra easy I recommend MeshCentral, it's minor quirks around novnc are so easy to overlook since it just works so well.

If you want a modern TeamViewer then go with RustDesk/betterdesk but it's newer and needs some extra work to get going.

All these projects are open source, free, self hostable, has headless file and terminal access, and have web clients.

For using Linux on any remote solution you pretty much have to run the desktop on x11 instead of Wayland. I don't know if any software has found a great Wayland solution yet.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

[Thread #132 for this comm, first seen 16th Oct 2026, 18:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

A buddy just shipped a pre-configured Comet Q to their parents.

Apache guacamole is really nice. Became a game changer for me.

Don't worry about vpn failures. I have used headscale for a long uninterrupted time. Yes, eventually you may need physical access. That event is as frequent as having a broken boot partition :p be careful to read changelogs when applying updates or have some other means to access of you will... Just saying that for me it has worked perfectly fine.

Two tools I have been using to replace TeamViewer that check some of your boxes, but not all are:

• Tailscale
• RustDesk

Both free and widely used in the community for many of the purposes you’re looking for.

Both operate slightly different from each other. But to give you insight into how I use them:

I use Tailscale as a VPN into my house for stuff like Jellyfin remote viewing on my iPhone or laptop when not at home, SSH/RDP/SMB remote access into my home network and between my devices. I replaced my Docker VPN that was becoming tedious to manage with this and it’s been a lot better and easier to manage.

I use RustDesk for my family and friends who want my help like out of state relatives. It works just like TeamViewer but without the greed or stupid nags or limitations to force you to pay. It just works.

There’s some others like RustDesk others may recommend too. There’s a few others out there I’ve tried, but RustDesk has been great for me.

Haven’t used TeamViewer in over 5 years because of these and other similar services.