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Cygwin's XFree86 4.2.0 on Windows XP

Posted by timothy on from the so-who's-using-it dept.

stock writes: "A interesting and important piece of software on the win32 platform for me has always been X11 server software like Hummingbird's Exceed, or Startnet's Xwin32 Professional. Today i glanced at cygwin's site and found that a complete XFree86 4.2.0 for Windows XP can be downloaded now! It shouldn't be hard for newcomers as it features a setup.exe . The package comes free and is basicly licensed as X style licensed software which runs on cygwin32 which has a GPL license." Looks like this has been out since May -- can anyone who's been using it since then comment on how well it works? Update: 07/07 17:12 GMT by T : haroldhunt (project leader for Cygwin/XFree86) wrote to clarify: "Cygwin/XFree86 runs on all recent consumer and business versions of Windows; as of 2002-05-12 those versions are specifically Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP."

4 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. Er... by hatless · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is news? The cygwin XF86 port has been around since long before May. Anyone who's installed cygwin this past year probably knows about it.

    It didn't run rootless as of the last time I checked, which is quite a limitation. Has this changed? Hummingbird and Starnet don't have anything to worry about until then.

  2. RedHat Thin Client Edition? by peterdaly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have not used this yet, but I will be giving it a try at work on Monday. Based on what I am hearing in comments, it seems to work fairly well.

    If I were RedHat, I would make RedHat "Thin Client Edition" out of it. Modify the RedHat install to accept connections and display a X login, or at least have that option during install. I know I have been able to do that before, but all the protocol and service names slip my mind right now.

    Once that is in place, marketing can begin. Migrate to centralized (Linux) application management without betting the farm. I know you can easily turn most PC's into X-Terminals, but most people would be more comfortable starting with a Windows Client version first. Offering OpenOffice and Mozilla to "clients" would be able to cover 90% of what low end user needs to do. They can even keep Outlook/Exchange running on their desktop if they don't want to pull the plug on that yet, which is a common reason for staying with windows on the desktop.

    If they were to package and market this correctly, it could be the first step in moving into the desktop realm.

    -Pete

    --
    Soccer Goal Plans
  3. Re:Works perfectly. Killer app. by Insount · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The killer right now is letting them use Mozilla and Evolution through X from a server located outside the firewall: very secure and virusless (and cheap!)
    So, you're going to let an unsecure box act as an X client for the secure boxes? That would give the unsecure box the power to:
    • monitor the content of the X displays on the secure boxes
    • inject keystrokes, e.g., when someone on the secure boxes logs in as root
    • display arbitrary stuff on the secure boxes (e.g., "System Locked, enter password to unlock").

    Unless the X display is used *only* for the specified apps and users are very conscious of what's going on, you're not gaining security much in principle. It's true, however, that most generic attacks won't affect the secure boxes; some more effort by the attacker would be required.
  4. Why Not VNC and tightVNC? by Sgt_Nikon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I used to use Exceed and Reflection X, but once I found out about VNC I switched and never looked back. VNC has the added benefit of leaving my stuff where I left it on my linux box when my windows machine needs a reboot.