[lug] remote xterm question...: X servers for Windows

[John E. Koontz]

At 07:40 PM 5/9/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>I have a RH 9 box and would like to access it remotely from a Windoz box.  Can
>anyone suggest what software I should place on each to accomplish said 
>task?  I
>read some online docs, but can't seem to ascertain the best open source
>solution.

You can connect with ssh, e.g., puTTY, and other options, though I like 
puTTY best of the free ones (and most other I've used!).    There are less 
secure ways to connect, but no good reason to use them.

You can run an X server on your Windows system (setting up the connection 
with ssh and piping  clients through ssh), e.g., Cygwin (free) or 
(commercial):  Labtam X-ThinPro, LabF WinaXe (seems very similar to 
previous), Microimages MI/X, X-Win32, Frontiertech SuperX, Omni-X, 
Hummingbird Exceed, etc.  Prices vary a lot 
(http://www.microimages.com/mix/prices.htm), and so do features.

Always look to see if a server works with any major applications you need 
to use - these can be rather perverse about things like fonts (especially).

Things to look at in general are ease of configurability especially wrt 
creating canned client setups (where to log on as who and what to start) or 
canned sessions (sets of clients you use together), adequate font support, 
ssh support.   You probably want a system that is able to integrate X 
clients with Windows "clients" on your "Windows desktop," though ways are 
often provided to create an X desktop in a Windows window and to use 
various desktop managers, native to the server and imported from your X 
system within that window.   I've never liked that approach much, but some 
people do.   There seem to be fewer free X servers than there were a few 
years ago, and there were never many.   Most of the free ones weren't 
especially good.   I'm not familiar with Cygwin.

I've always thought that Hummingbird was good on most of these counts, but 
for a while it didn't do ssh, and the documentation (and advertising) has 
always been a bit complex and slightly off target, as if they didn't quite 
know how to explain what the products did or how you use them.   I suspect 
they have a bit of a disconnect between their writers and their technical 
people!    Their prices are high.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
http://www.xfree86.org/
http://www.cygwin.com/xfree/
http://www.labtam-inc.com/
http://www.labf.com/
http://www.microimages.com/mix/
http://www.starnet.com/
http://www.frontiertech.com/default.asp
http://www.xlink.com/nfs_products/Omni-X_Server/Omni-X_Server.htm
http://www.frontiertech.com/default.asp
http://www.hummingbird.com/role/default/home.html


John E. Koontz
NIST 896.04 PCSG
303-497-5180

N39° 59' 42.1" W 105° 15' 49.7"