Oh wow! Nice! I haven’t used this one, but I will definitely give it a try. :)

Thanks for the tip!

For those of you still using Cygwin for X-windows emulation on Windows, should maybe look at XMing http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/. I don’t use X a lot, but i could never get Cygwin to work properly – and it was such a disk hog. Putty & XMing is compact easy to setup and run’s without any complicated configuration.

VNC is more geared towards remote support because both the local and remote users usually share the same desktop session. RDP on the other hand utilizes Windows Terminal Services letting you work in your private instance.

This doesn’t have to be the case with Linux, however. It’s an easy matter to setup vncserver to allow you to get your full session – you need not “share your desktop”. I often used TightVNC several years ago, and it was pretty speedy, using such optimizations as a local-mouse (no need to send mouse pointer movements constantly), disabling of the background desktop image, jpeg compression, and other improvements. As for the remote-x issue/console issues, XDMCP solves that. Cygwin is slow, IMO, but Xwin32 is extremely FAST, and you get your whole desktop as well if you use XDMCP.

However, the X protocol isn’t really fast enough over the Internet, in my experience, even with ssh compression, so I will give NX a try.

>> In fact, I noticed that NX is sometimes faster than just X.

No doubt. NX uses far less bandwidth than X, people report being able to use X or VNC via NX over dialup and it’s actually responsive and useful.

It works just fine – it uses ssh for login, and then tunnels the visual stuff through there. Its actually almost exactly the same experience as using X remotely, only that you can easily set it up to get the full desktop. I think they are using some proprietary protocol for transmitting the graphical data.

In fact, I noticed that NX is sometimes faster than just X. When you do remote X you sometimes hit that lag – your application locks for a second or two. This doesn’t really happen that often on nx – the lag gets somehow diffused, so you do get stuff reacting slowly at times, and see some trailing (when your window leaves that shadow trail behind it as you drag it) but it doesn’t really gets stuck. In a way it reminds me of the Remote desktop experience. :)

[quote post=”1966″]Seems like the smaller and more compact choice as opposed to running an actual instance of X under Cygwin. Just seems like less hassle. [/quote]

Yeah, I suppose you are right. It is habit for me to load cygwin on all my Windows systems. This is what I use to support my engineers instead of paying for Hummingbird Exceed licenses.

How does NX run on a multi-user system?

You are right – when accessing Linux from Linux, Unix, BSD or OSX, remote X is probably the easiest solution.

On windows however, nx is probably the better choice for windows. The client is a 5MB package that installs in seconds and works very, very simillar to Rdesktop. Seems like the smaller and more compact choice as opposed to running an actual instance of X under Cygwin. Just seems like less hassle. :)

Why not use the standard that has been around longer . . . like X?

cygwin has xfree86 and ssh, the two pieces you need to display X windows on your Windows system securely. I have been running a variation of the for years with few issues. If you really need the entire Linux desktop, well, I guess you would be better off with NX.

Yes, I know you can get the entire desktop with X, but not without opening XDMCP or some serious script writing.

Very true – there is nothing that can’t be done from the command line in the linux world. :)

screen FTW!

I didn’t know about nx, but I’m looking forward to trying it. Thanks!

I appreciate the work and design of VNC, but the performance lags so far behind that using it is painful after having used RDP.

Thankfully though it’s mostly been a moot issue for my usage. Remotely administering Windows machines *requires* a GUI and RDP does great. It’s very satisfying to use, and I really enjoy it.

When working remotely on a *nix machine, though, plain text over SSH is all I want.

/me hugs screen + vim + zsh + /**/*