Works on 17.04 as well.

The biggest pain about Ubuntu is changes they made to vnc setup. Often, once you think you have it set up, you connect and get nothing but the ancient X windows grey screen with no way to interact with the UI.

This method works for 17.04 and 16.04. It’s also faster performance that other approaches.

Ubuntu 16.04 – Configure your system to have x11vnc running at startup

Summary:

sudo apt-get install x11vnc -y
sudo x11vnc -storepasswd /etc/x11vnc.pass
Edit /lib/systemd/system/x11vnc.service

[Unit]
Description=Start x11vnc at startup.
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/x11vnc -auth guess -forever -loop -noxdamage -repeat -rfbauth /etc/x11vnc.pass -rfbport 5900 -shared
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable x11vnc.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo shutdown -r now

On reboot run the script:
sudo ./vnc-startup.sh

Or, just manually start it:
x11vnc -usepw -forever

Use your vnc client to connect to the system’s ip address at port :5900