[lug] remote xterm question...

[Bear Giles]

Peter Hutnick wrote:
> It seems like you might /really/ mean that you want your Windows PC to
> emulate an X Terminal (which is a piece of hardware).

There are some X terminal programs for Windows out there.  I've
seen them at a few sites - they aren't bad, but if you're used to 
Unix you'll still find them annoyingly Windows-centric.

I disagree with describing X terminals as only pieces of hardware. 
  X defines a wire protocol for use between client and server, and 
it's the same protocol regardless of whether it goes across your 
ethernet connection, the loopback device, or a Unix socket.  There 
were some hardware X terminals produced in the 80s, but hardware 
prices have long been so low that this would have been a false 
optimization.  Today you would set up the same thing with diskless 
system using a PXE network boot.

 > VNC

Does VNC use the X protocol?  Some of the documentation refers to 
communications occuring over port 5090, not 8000 et seq.

This isn't a moot point.  If it really uses the X protocol, it 
makes much more sense to me to modify the X startup scripts to 
start up multiple servers than to use an entirely unrelated 
server.  You can then use the regular XDM login procedure, etc.

 > I routinely connect from
> work to my home box (via a Comcast cable modem) at 950x525x16bit color and
> the performance is acceptable to me.

Is it safe?  X has a couple native cryptographic authentication 
methods, or could be run through a VPN or (ugh) SSH tunnel.  It 
looked like VNC runs naked.

> Someone mentioned telnet.  There is no valid reason to run telnet. 
> Period.  Telnet bad.

Stock telnet bad.  There are some versions of telnet that support 
strong authentication and encryption.  Some secadmins may prefer a 
fully kerberized network over individually configured SSHD daemons.