This really can't be taught enough to the folks here who post these kinds of threads/questions. OP may not even know what a rootkit is. Hell, they may not even know what SSH is, but the best way to go about solving the issue is to think of what you want to accomplish and figure out the tools you'll need to get that done.
This is a positive side-effect of a common unix philosophy called "KISS", which stands for "Keep it simple, stupid." When you have a task that needs to get done (in your case remote administration) the working end-result will often be a multi-component solution with each piece of software having their own straightforward purpose.
It will almost never be a single huge file you download off of the internet, w/ a next-next-finish interface, that'll let you open up built in text-to-speech software on your friends computer over the internet. Sorry to break it to you. 
KISS is a good philosophy on life, but you would be surprised how often even highly knowledgeable people miss something simple, ive done it, and had it pointed out to me. I've done it, and figured out days weeks months or years later that holy shit i could have done that so much easier/faster with knowledge i already had...or ive also pointed it out to others. Not saying we dont have a lot of questions here that should have been googled first, then maybe clarified here after. but his orginal post didnt seem totally off base, just that he didnt realize their was so many utilities built in that could do what he was looking for. In other words he may be new to linux, but is at least familiar enough with what he wanted to do windows wise, but wasnt sure about how to do it in linux, and the terminology he used may have been problematic for searching. So i dont see this one as "obviously dumb" as you seem to be implying. To give a good example of this...
A while back (re years ago) i was a member of one of those DIY/self help forums, it was one of the larger ones and i enjoyed the layout, and the fact that over all the people contributing knowledge were very much in the know. For instance i got some car help that i had NOT yet been able to figure out on my own, or with google, that some seriously experienced mechanics helped me to find the solution. Obviously one of the areas i helped in constantly was the computer section. Anyway someone came with the the age old "i forgot my password to my server...uh oh" and by the time i got to it their had been ~5 or so replys on different ways they could break into this windows 2k server without FUBARing it or otherwise destroying data, some of them were...insanely detailed. In other words they were not dumb responses in the sense of right or wrong, every one of them showed a great deal of familiarity with the OS/what the user needed. But every one of them took at least 30 minutes to implement. In comes my post "just use a recovery disk like bartpe(+ link)" chorus from all the sysadmins before me "oh shit why didnt i think of that...". It is not always lack of knowledge, but a difference in viewpoint that makes all the difference. People here posted to shift his viewpoint on what he was looking to do, and im sure (assuming he came back to look at this thread again, which im guessing he did) he learned a lesson.
