What is Digg?51 Comments
- m2ger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13@8080ed:
No, You don't have to pay. Use vnc+ssh, for example - jambarama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11That is a good point, but you really can't expect the guy to give step-by-step directions for every distro out there.
Plus, if you go to the end of the article, it points to a tutorial for Debian. I looked it over and it should work with *buntu, Mepis, and any other Debian-based distro (like Knoppix, and Kanotix).
The problem I have with this is that it only works linux to linux. If you have a windows box at work, you're stuck with VNC. You could probably get it to run in Cygwin, use a VM, or a liveCD, but just for remote desktop that seems like a pain.
Plus, if you are security minded, you always can tunnel VNC through SSH: http://pigtail.net/LRP/vnc/ . - pr0cty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Just got this running today in less than 5 minutes
via: http://www.haxxors.org/howto/freenx.php
Secure & Fast - shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -14/+20step 1:
"1 - Configure nxserver
Kanotix Linux includes by default all the necessary packages pre-installed to get FreeNX up and running. Most other Linux distributions require the download and installation of various NX libraries and apps... google-is-your-friend for the specific requirements of your distro of choice."
bravo *slow clap*
seriously thats pathetic... who opens a guide with "google is your friend" how do you think most people got to the damn website? you should be building this thing from source! or at least on a distro i've heard of.... - TheBarge, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8And why can't I just use VNC with whatever distro I want?
- redson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"The problem I have with this is that it only works linux to linux. If you have a windows box at work, you're stuck with VNC. You could probably get it to run in Cygwin, use a VM, or a liveCD, but just for remote desktop that seems like a pain."
FreeNX works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. And it blows VNC performance out of the water, it's really insane.
I'm not sure it's still available, but they used to have a demo server you could connect to in Italy. I was amazed it was still completely usable from California, United States.
I use FreeNX on a machine that I have MythTV running on. It's the best of both worlds, it's headless, but I still get to use the graphical interface when setting it up. - NetJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5both of these are secure, your using ssh tunneling... just lock access to 127.0.0.1.
- gmillerd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The session resuming is terrible. Like happens with a crappy VNC impliementation at times a graphical tool will crash the conduit as well. That session is 'there' but unable to be accessed. So all those apps are sitting there hung basically.
Its definately not XDM+VNC+Screen - sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I used to play with forwarding X over SSH. It was neat on a geek level but if ANYTHING happened to your connection, everything was lost. I don't know about you, but a lot of times when I'm remote the connection can be a bit sketchy... the slightest hiccup and all your open X apps die and you have to start over from scratch.
I gave up on that idea and have been forwarding VNC over SSH ever since. If my link goes down for a second, I just reconnect and I'm right where I left off. - starheart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4FreeNX would be good if it wasn't so buggy. My overall impression of FreeNX, 2x, and Nomachine is they are all buggy. 2x wouldn't close a session. FreeNX had problems resuming sessions. Nomachine's nxagent has a huge memory leak.
- mendicant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've found that nx seems much nicer to use remotely than vnc. It just seems a little bit snappier to me.
- nave7693, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In my experiments I can use version 1.5 of the nomachine client for windows to access my home box running Gentoo. Everything works fine, resuming works most of the time (takes a little retrying to get going again). All this without an X server running from either Cygwin or others (like the commercial Exceed). I would happily prefer this over VNC for speed.
- LordSkippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@jambarama:
You can get Windows based NX clients that work with a FreeNX server. I do it from my work machine (Windows) to my linux box at home. Works great!
Here is the one I use: http://www.nomachine.com/download.php
@TOTALineptitude:
Sometimes it's nice to browse the web graphically, without the system admins at work watching your traffic. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7god forbid I have to PAY for someones hard work.
- zoxed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3> umm, how on this planet could FreeNX make it faster than ssh + x forwarding...
FreeNX uses client side caching. - adesalvo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It's more secure (username AND password authentication) and it's great for slower connections.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have had the exact same experiences. Buggy as hell on a closed and controlled high speed network. Sessions constantly freeze and are unrecoverable.
That kind of behavior on a remote session is totally unacceptable. - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For all who are wondering "why not use VNC" ? ..... FreeNX > VNC
X Forwarding / compression rates are far superior. I've used both FreeNX and VNC and FreeNX looks more crisp and responsive. - poohw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1nave7693: the X server that runs on the client machine is actually a modified version of xwin (from Cygwin).
- mendicant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just a heads up for those of you connecting using the nomachine windows client... They just released 2.0.0 and I'm not so sure that it's compatible with the current freenx.
(of course if I'm wrong, please let me know)
I got around it by just googling for nxclient 1.5.0 (which nomachine no longer offers for download on their site). - Ashex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I had the same problem. This website has still has it:
http://www.industrial-statistics.com/info/nxclients?IndStats=bbf349f90a518f5a54f290e887d9c768
And in case that link goes bye bye:
http://www.chipnick.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/nxclient-1.5.0-114.exe
But try and use that first link, I like my bandwidth :) - alienz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@LordSkippy
You seemed to have missed the point of an ssh tunnel. You set your local browser to proxy through the SSH tunnel. There is no X11 involved. Search digg for ssh tunnels. - eliteturbo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2umm, how on this planet could FreeNX make it faster than ssh + x forwarding...
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, that can be a hassle with X forwarding. I guess it's just a matter of trade-off's and what you are looking to do.
- daedalus01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1w00t for the author using dd-wrt!
- sublime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2RTFA - Its a faster secure X session. It claims to be faster than SSH with X forwarding
- shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"eagerly awaiting shrewdusers "non-pathetic" walkthru..."
don't hold your breath, however if i did write it it wouldn't have "google is your friend" in the first paragraph. - lpcustom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah I posted that howto on digg like a week ago.
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Debian_Ubuntu_etc_FreeNX_Howto
freenx is much faster than VNC and it's not just for debian it's for any distro of Linux you want to use it on. - dsn0wman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love NX, its 110% more usable than VNC. It would be nice to have a portable nxclient running from USB drive only.
- raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1More seriously than "google-is-your-friend", the description here on Digg is inaccurate. NX Server might give you remote access to "your Linux box" or to "a fast Linux desktop", but it doesn't give you remote access to "YOUR Linux desktop". That is to say, if you leave your email client up at home to continuously download mail (as I do), freenx won't do anything for you.
x11vnc, however, works great for that (though I wish it were x11nx so it would be faster.) Like NX, you set it to localhost only and tunnel in via ssh for security. - drag0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Use Xming and putty with X forwarding. Otherwise just use putty on its own. Simple.
- lolokun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Because FreeNX is incredibly faster than VNC or SSH+X11 forwarding (even with compression activated). I've tried these 3 solutions and FreeNX (NoMachine libraries actually) is just the fastest and most responsive. It rivals with remote desktop on Windows for the responsiveness. I use it over a DSL connexion and find it very usable.
The only drawback I found with FreeNX is that you can't resume an X session that has not been created with FreeNX (like a normal local X session). - lpcustom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you are running Debian or any of it's offspring, this howto is more straightforward:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Debian_Ubuntu_etc_FreeNX_Howto - LordSkippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@tehmoth:
And you apparently have never done graphical web browser over ssh + X-11 forwarding on the connection I have at work and then compared it to using NX. NX is much faster and more responsive. BTW, NX uses a ssh tunnel. It just transfers less data over the wire. - Psylo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Windows XP (NT?) RDP Remote Desktop Protocol is really fast (but not secure). And there are RDP clients available for OSX & Linux.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ssh + x11 forwarding works perfect for me. I have cygwin on a usb drive for when i'm on a windows box. I can even run opengl apps over the x11 forwarding because I have cygwin configured for gl acceleration.
- schmutzkaufmann, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2eagerly awaiting shrewdusers "non-pathetic" walkthru...
- tehmoth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@LordSkippy: thats what ssh tunnels are for, no gui overhead, just a socks connection
- edmicman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Why in the world wouldn't you just use VNC or OpenSSH?
- Splizxer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Veamon
Why would you wan't to pay for a free and open-source solution?
I mean, Windows XP Professional has the remote desktop built into it. - jsather, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0
I just set this up as well, but I used this site:
http://www.linux-tip.net/cms/content/view/158/6/
It also has a link to the Windows NX client at the bottom. Much faster then CygwinX over SSH. - quanticle, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4How is this better than SSH?
- schmuckman99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have been using freeNX for a while and it is great. However "WARNING" the NX client has not worked on my dual core laptop. Even after nomachine stated that they fixed it.
- Ouroboros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How well does FreeNX play with the NX 2.0 protocol? Particularly, now that NoMachine has a free NX server implementation available for popular linux distros, it would be good to see how it behaves. NoMachine is the developer of NX, so to a certain degree, their implementations are "reference" implementations.
Oh, checkout
http://www.cosmopod.com
they do NX 1.5 hosted linux sessions for free (there's a small sidebar of ads when the session opens), though performance is kinda variable. I really wish they would upgrade to 2.0 , if only so that the NoMachine windows client won't barf everytime I attempt to connect from behind a proxy due to lack of font server connection tunneling support. - poohw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Note that the NoMachine personal edition is free. I've had more luck with that than with FreeNX.
- jambarama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@8080ed
Although all VNC encrypts VNC passwords sent over the net, the rest of the traffic is sent as is, unencrypted (for password encryption, VNC uses a DES-encrypted challenge-response scheme, where the password is limited by 8 characters, and the effective DES key length is 56 bits).
So using TightVNC over the Internet can be a security risk. To solve this problem, tightVNC plans to work on built-in encryption in future versions of TightVNC. So if you need real security, install OpenSSH, and using SSH tunneling for all TightVNC connections from untrusted networks.
UltraVNC supports the use of an open-source encryption plugin which encrypts the entire VNC session including password authentication and data transfer. It also allows authentication to be performed based on NTLM and Active Directory user accounts. So free, open source, & secure.
RealVNC offers high-strength encryption as part of its commercial package. So yeah, you have to pay for it, but there are other free alternatives. - edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Forget distros, VNC is cross-platform.
- huggiesmiff, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Im co-signing quanticles comment. And who would want remote desktop access on Linux? Wouldnt you rather use a terminal? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3But you have to PAY for a secure version of VNC.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Why would you want access to the linux GUI?
I hate to sound like an elitist linux *****..
But if you are smart enough to run linux on a desktop, you can probably accomplish any remote task over putty / ssh.
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is