Next to impossible over WAN, at least without VPN (and SSH may be simpler than VPN). Some SSH servers disable X by default and your admin may have to configure it.Īvoids SSH overhead. Security (auth and encryption) is already handled. Good (draw commands, small lag for encryption) Nearly none (assuming exising SSH server) In another common case this is an SSH tunnel (mostly just because end-to-end access over anything larger than a LAN is likely to be firewalled). this is usually transparent because it picks up the the contents of DISPLAY environment variable) In the typical case this is on the local machine (:0, :1, etc. You can tell any X app (technically X client) to display on any X display it can reach.

If you want a remote X session that persists between (re)connections, look at ways of wrapping it - VNC, NX, Xpra, etc.Īlso note that, over time, X has become less efficient to use over a network see e.g. Note that remote X makes less sense over a large distance, or over wifi, as the connection and the session are transient, meaning the app would die the first network hiccup. Which were all connected to a single server that ran the actual programs for many such dumb terminals

A room full of dumb terminal used to make senseĭumb terminals meaning cheaper hardware that could do little more than display things.

Remote: you log into a remote machine, you tell an app on the remote machine to contact your local X server over the network.

Usually: the X server is on the same machine - it's the thing displaying graphics on your monitor.Ī number of modern extensions will only work when run locally - notably hardware related ones, such as GPU features.

9.1.4 Example using Cygwin/X (windows) as a clientĮach X application is an X client that you can connect to any X server (the thing that draws things for you) over the network.

2.5.4 Ultravnc forgets password, and other settings (WinXP).

2.5.3 'Unknown authentication scheme from VNC server: 18' (Remmina).

2.5.2 'Server did not offer supported security type' / 'No matching security types' / 'No security types supported' / 'Unknown authentication scheme from VNC server'.

2.5.1 Black right half in multi-monitor.

Vnc vs nomachine bandwidth