With Ubuntu 16.04 at the remote and local ends, I was unable to type anything into the Spyder IDE when connecting remotely over VNC.

What finally fixed this problem for me was using TurboVNC on my laptop.

Install TurboVNC

1. Download the latest TurboVNC .deb file
2. Install the .deb file

gdebi turbovnc*.deb

Now, the command vncviewer maps to the more advanced TurboVNC instead of TightVNC.

Notes

Before using TurboVNC, errors included

Qt: XKEYBOARD extension not present on the X server.

I tried putting in my remote system’s ~/.bashrc the line

export XKB_DEFAULT_RULES=base

based on Spyder Github Issue but with no luck.