Next Knoppix Release to Feature GPL'd FreeNX

linuxtag-reporter writes "The first day of LinuxTag, Europe's biggest Free Software event (expecting 25,000 visitors) already has one big highlight. It seems that Fabian Franz from the Knoppix Project hacked up a 'FreeNX Server' based on NoMachine's NX technology (poor NoMachine might lose business now). Fabian Franz presented a first preview of the 'GPL Edition' in a live demo together with Kurt Pfeifle. The demo showed sessions going from Germany to Italy just based on a slow WLAN connectivity (shared with hundreds of visitors). A connection lost due to bad network conditions was easily re-connected to, and a deliberately suspended session was revitalized too -- it was just like 'screen' with a GUI! A report on the official LinuxTag webpage says FreeNX will be publically released for the first time as part of the upcoming Knoppix-3.6 release. The Kalyxo project is building and hosting Debian packages of FreeNX and NX/GPL for everyone to use."

Comments

Re:cool

[presmike]

my keyboard ate the ol off the word tool

What do these things do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides being part of a future Knoppix release, what is NX?

Please assume that some readers (me, others?) don't know what "screen" is.

Maybe I should google for "linux screen knoppix" - that would be useful...

I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?

-ac

Re:What do these things do?

[tachin]

I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to? Maybe because that's the whole point of the web...you know...hyperlinks and all..?

Re:What do these things do?

[Leomania]

From the manpage for screen:

"Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a
physical terminal between several processes (typically
interactive shells)."

I use it all the time; start an interactive job while I'm at work on a particular machine using screen, disconnect using "CTRL-A d" then go home, log into the same machine, issue the command "screen -r" and I'm right back into that shell session.

These days, I mostly use TightVNC over a VPN pipe instead, which gives me the graphical equivalent of this.

Hope this helps.

- Leo

Re:What do these things do?

[telloc]

Well, I did click the link, and I'm not sure what the hell it is either.

Re:What do these things do?

[Aumaden]

AC: I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?

tachin: Maybe because that's the whole point of the web...you know...hyperlinks and all..?

Hah! I was right the whole point of posting an article on Slashdot is to beat nomachine.com into a quivering mass of submission!

Seriously though, simply explaining what "NX" meant might have spared nomachine's server for at least a few more minutes.

Re:What do these things do?

[Anonymous Coward]

This brings me on to a question I have wondered for a while. I am no linux/X guru and everyone I have asked this to before has ignored me or not known. and my searching abilities obviously arent up to scratch.

Is there a way of reattatching a running X application to a different X server without having to kill it & re-open it? I use screen all the time for IRC and I use tightVNC as well, but sometimes VNC can get a bit heavy on my connection. It would be nice if I could take a single running X application with me without havign to take the whole desktop.

Thanks in advance.

Re:What do these things do?

[KilobyteKnight]

So, you're saying that you should be able to get a full and complete understanding of a technical system solution from a Slashdot article blurb without doing any research of your own or without reading any of the links?

I believe what what the poster meant was that a news posting should at least have a basic overview of what the heck it's about.

I know what Knoppix is, I know what screen is, but I don't have a clue what NX is. Even descriptive adjectives would help.

I'm interested in finding out what NX is. Since the link is Sashdotted I can't at the moment. I've gotten side tracked by your anonymous flame. I will probably have forgotten about it by later today. So I'm left wondering.

The editors here signed million dollar contracts, revenue is coming in from ads and subscriptions, they've been at it for years.... you'd think they'd have learned at least a few basic journalism techniques.

I see a lot of wrong information posted as news. The most descriptive news items are typically when they lucked out and copied a good paragraph from the story link. Heck, they aren't even good at checking to see if they've already posted the story on their own site.

It's just laziness. I'd expect such from volunteers... but as I pointed out, they're getting paid well.

Re:What do these things do?

[XMyth]

Good point, lets not use the forum we have here for discussing things and just everyone be quiet and if you have any questions then keep them to yourself.

Re:What do these things do?

[Leomania]

Not that I know of. You have no idea how many times I've had a task run longer than anticipated, and I *must* be in front of the GUI to do something based upon the result (not automatable) and I can't afford to have the program sit idle overnight just 'cuz I wanted to go home. I wanted this capability real bad about that point, believe you me.

So for now it's VNC, and perhaps one of these other discussed protocols (NX, RDB) down the road.

Cheers,

- Leo

Re:What do these things do?

[dipipanone]

So, you're saying that you should be able to get a full and complete understanding of a technical system solution from a Slashdot article blurb without doing any research of your own or without reading any of the links?

Not at all. Unfortunately, there isn't even the vaguest hint of what NX is from the article -- personally, I thought it was a Needle eXchange. But I decided to Google it to check.

I'm glad I did though, because otherwise I'd never have known they were incorporating some new lesbian porn server into forthcoming linux distros.

Re:What do these things do?

[stevey]

What you are looking for is xmove.

It's not been updated since '94 and it's flakey as hell - but it allows you to move an X application from machine to machine.

It works as a proxy server between your application and the real X server - which must be listening on a TCP socket.

I've toyed with it, but not managed a great deal of success.

Re:What do these things do?

[walt-sjc]

Hmm. I was also trying to RTFA to see WTF freeNX is, but it seems as though ALL the links are slashdotted except for the kalyxo page which didn't seem to mention it.

I agree 100% that articles should give a very brief overview (hell - a one liner would be enough) so interested people can do more reading. Without the overview we have no f-ing clue what the article is talking about. Oh yeah, a google for freenx only comes up with 2 links for porn and an intro to Linux. No help there.

Re:What do these things do?

[ncc74656]

I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?

You could, but it's currently slashdotted...no doubt by people like you and me wondering WTF the article is about.

Re:What do these things do?

[lazyl]

Besides being part of a future Knoppix release, what is NX?

From what I gathered from the link before it was /.ed, NX is basically a system (client/server) for efficiently commpressing X-Window data. Personaly, I can't wait to try it; X over a busy internet connection is painful, often barely usable (in my experience anyway).

Re:What do these things do?

[hazem]

Is this very different than running X over a compressed ssh connection?

I'm guessing that ssh only compresses the data, not considering what it is, and that NX can compress the X data because it knows that it's looking at things going on in a gui and can make shorthand for different things.

Re:What do these things do?

[TuringTest]

Or, the editor could have provided a link to the previous story, which she hasn't.

Re:What do these things do?

[deinol]

It's just laziness. I'd expect such from volunteers... but as I pointed out, they're getting paid well.

Are you personally paying them for this service? Slashdot has been like this for as long as I've been here. Nothings changed since they started making money. I say good for them. I hate people complaining about how slashdot isn't as good anymore. What do you mean? It's exactly what it was when it started. A place for links to other sites that have news nerds might find interesting, and a place to comment on those things. It was popular before they started making money for being the way it is, if it started changing because they now have revenue, maybe people wouldn't like it as much. Who knows. Myself, I won't complain about a resource that is free for me to use, and that I've learned a lot from over the years.

Besides, it's not like a hundred people didn't jump in to explain what screen was. Haven't used it in years myself, but hey, that's cool.

Re:What do these things do?

[LurkerXXX]

That would entail knowing that a story has been posted about the subject, and from the dups and even triple postings Slashdot is renowned for, you just KNOW they haven't the slightest clue if a related story was posted before. (they don't even know if the SAME story was posted before)

You know, I think there's money to be made setting up a good alternate to slashdot where the editors actually spend a few minutes seeing what's been posted before and editing the article blurbs.

Re:What do these things do?

[iceburn]

I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?

You could, but it's currently slashdotted...no doubt by people like you and me wondering WTF the article is about.

This is great! Not only are we taking away their market share, but we're running their bandwidth costs through the roof!

</joke>

Re:What do these things do?

[BigP84]

Wow people, how lazy are you? I didnt know what it was but a quick look and I knew. Why do people expect so much for free?

Re:What do these things do?

[KilobyteKnight]

Nothings changed since they started making money.

Oh, but it has. It changed from being a hobby to being a business. A business based in part on ad revenue. And I, as a consumer, for whom those ads are targetted, certainly have every right to comment on the quality of the service.

One thing that has remained pretty much the same is the quality of the service. I expect more from professionals than I do from hobbyists. And don't kid yourself into thinking they haven't entered the realm of paid professionals.

Don't get me wrong, the Slashdot crew broke ground. I respect them for that. They were among the first to do what they do. They created something wonderful. Then they got paid and have done little more than add a couple of features to the website since then. Moderating and meta-moderating and karma may help weed some of the nonsense out of the user responses, but unless they pay attention to people like me the nonsense will continue in the articles themselves.

I intend this as constructive criticism, not a troll or a flame. I want Slashdot to stay around. I just want it to be better.

Slashdot shouldn't rest on its laurels.

Re:What do these things do?

[Brandybuck]

Actually Slashdot has changed quite a bit. It used to be a hot steaming turd, but now it's a crusty shriveled turd.

Re:What do these things do?

[aurelien]

> And I, as a consumer,

You are not a consumer. You are the very food the slashdot site owners sell to the advertisers.

Re:What do these things do?

[Archibald Buttle]

You expect basic journalism techniques from the editors?

Here on Slashdot?

Somebody mod this guy as funny please! :-)

Re:What do these things do?

[geeber]

The editors here signed million dollar contracts, revenue is coming in from ads and subscriptions, they've been at it for years.... you'd think they'd have learned at least a few basic journalism techniques.

Except that Slashdot is not a journalism site, and we may call the editors "editors" but they are not, at least not in the traditional sense. Slashdot aggregates links to news on other sites. And the "editors" usually just repost submissions along perhaps a supposedly witty comment or two.

So I don't expect basic journalism techniques as the function of Slashdot is not journalism.

Re:What do these things do?

[deinol]

Moderating and meta-moderating and karma may help weed some of the nonsense out of the user responses, but unless they pay attention to people like me the nonsense will continue in the articles themselves.

True. What we really need to do is eliminate the editors entirely. Make it so that users with high karma get to see the submissions, and moderate the news posts just like user responses (Interesting, Redundant, Innaccurate, etc). When they hit +5, they go on the front page.

The whole point of slashdot is a community driven site. The news is already submitted by the users, why not go all the way?

Re:What do these things do?

[ne0shell]

NXclient and Server are a lot like VNC but faster and support multimedia (ie sound) - I've used it for quite a while in the never expires demo from NoMachine and like it quite a bit for remote dekstop and managing a local linux box (I have 3 PCs at home active and only a 2 port switch). On my LAN I can watch a movie via NX playing on the linux box from my win box. Nice app, nice to see someone take the GPL version and rls a useable free version.

Correct me if I'm wrong

[Tim_F]

But an F/OSS hacker has taken a company's proprietary work and made it available for free, even giving it a similar name.

Why is this a good thing?

If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.

How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[hackel]

Heh, you obviously don't understand the point of Free software. In general, having that product available as Free software will attract much more users than the few at that particular company that might go out of business. If they are -smart-, they will assist the open source development effort, and re-tailor their business to provide expert integration solutions of FreeNX, etc.
It's all about -service- and developing code, not re-selling code over and over again without doing any work. That's the difference. They don't have to go out of business, just change their old business model.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[agoliveira]

Actually, you are wrong indeed.
All the core NX technology is GPL. The proprietary part is based on them. What Fabian did was to take those components and create it's own version of this part.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[finkployd]

But an F/OSS hacker has taken a company's proprietary work and made it available for free, even giving it a similar name.

Why is this a good thing?


Have they taken (ie stolen) the company's work? Or did they simply re-implement a commercial product's functionality from scratch? In the latter case I don't believe there is anything wrong with that (and seemingly neither do you, since you seem to be in support of Linux). In fact I consider that to be a very good thing. Complaining about that is like complaining that couples getting married and having sex out of love is hurting prostitution.

Finkployd

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[zgornz]

NX is a PUBLIC standard, they WANT other implementations of it. Nothing becomes real mainstream if it's closed, look at HTTP/FTP/SMTP/VNC those are all standards. Then you have closed things, like IM where there are a million different closed protocols (and yes a few open ones).

Knoppix is implementing a protocol that NX released, they also released a proprietary implementation of it. Obviously they want people to buy theirs, but they published the protocol so that others could use it to. (In turn making their protocol stronger, and their product stronger)

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Martin Blank]

Nothing becomes real mainstream if it's closed

Yeah, that Windows product will never catch on!

Sorry. I had to. I couldn't help it. The voices told me to.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Neil Watson]

Isn't that the whole point of free software? To create software that is not dependant on a single entity?

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[tolan-b]

Well if the GPL released code is only part of a system then what use is it without the non-GPL parts? In that case, why bother GPL-ing them at all? Unless you expect someone to finish off the missing bits...

This way they can have the core of their system updated, bug fixed etc by an OSS community, while still selling their value-add version.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Bob9113]

But an F/OSS hacker has taken a company's proprietary work

If I understand correctly, (s)he only took their Free work. The core of the NoMachine product is GPL.

and made it available for free ... Why is this a good thing?

Speaking strictly from a capitalist standpoint, it is good because it reduces the cost to businesses that wish to use this technology. Similarly, the freeness of HTTP software (client and server) has been a great boon to corporations that wish to provide easy access to information about their product lines. This has in turn lead to consumers making more informed decisions, which is one of the keystones of free market capitalism. (that's just the good part, in response to your question, see below for a look at the bad part)

even giving it a similar name.

The similarity in the name is the "NX" part. I believe NX is a Free protocol. This is much like referring to both Sendmail and Postfix as SMTP engines.

If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free

Very well said. This statemtnt (which clearly supports FLOSS) seems to be in contrast to the rest of your post.

which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.

All competition has this effect, whether from proprietary or Free sources. Are Chevrolet and Ford evil because they caused Yugo to go out of business?

How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?

They can't. But this makes a leap from "FreeNX removed or reduced the ability to charge twice for solving a problem once" to "developers will be unemployed." That is a spurious leap. The ideal situation, from an economic standpoint, would be for each solution to each problem to be developed once, and the development effort compensated once, freeing the development resource to move on to the next problem. The increased pool of available software labour resources would reduce the time delay businesses incur in solving their information problems, but does not necessarily reduce the time value of solving any given problem the first time. If we begin to approach software development as a temporally-oriented problem solving service, one cannot accurately predict the effect on the wages paid - the economic shift is too great to predict the result on the supply side - but the demand side will be very happy indeed.

We have not yet developed the economic models to make this a practical reality yet, but with FLOSS operating in tension with proprietary software, the economic stage has been set. This is the typical first stage in every major economic advancement - new technology, in this case zero cost reproduction of information, makes new economic models possible. The shift to the implementation of those new economic models must necessarily occur after the technological advancement, and so a period of market inefficiency occurs. It's not a bad thing, any more than Ford's assembly line was bad for Daimler Benz.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[merdark]

You FOSS types like to go on about 'changing their old business model'. But you never give *any* evidence, other than a few isolated cases, that this is possible in practise.

My hypothesis is that FOSS style business models cannot replace the current proprietary models. If everything were to go FOSS, then I think a LOT of programmers would be out of jobs. I dont' have any proof of this either, but I will point out that it's human nature not to pay for things they get for free. Selling services might work for corporations, but you'd lose 90% of the home market. That's a LOT of money and people who become unemployed.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Viking Coder]

People who use leaches to treat maladies like an imbalance of the humours are having a tough go of it, too.

Not every economy and market will live. I'm actually someone who writes code professionally, but I can acknowledge that it's more like mathematics - very few "mathematicians" are hired to do things that they used to, because now computers and calculators can do those simple tasks. It may well be that in the future, people are unwilling to pay for applications software without source code and the right to modify it and sell it themselves, and that the price they're willing to pay is $0. It could be.

Saying something is "not possible" just because you don't like the outcome, is kinda silly.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Random832]

All competition has this effect, whether from proprietary or Free sources. Are Chevrolet and Ford evil because they caused Yugo to go out of business?

Well, yes... but this is different.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[dipipanone]

But an F/OSS hacker has taken a company's proprietary work and made it available for free, even giving it a similar name.

What do you mean by proprietary? Have the F/OSS coders reused someone else's code? If so, the company will have no problem at all getting an injunction to stop them, and damages. Similarly, if this is the first ever terminal server type programme, I assume the original coders have patents and will be able to license their ideas.

Or were you just whining because some coders decided that they'd write a program to serve a certain function and would rather give their efforts away rather than selling them?

Why is this a good thing?

Oh, there's loads of reasons. Increased competition. Increased choice. Reduced operational costs for users. Simply because someone *can*, and that sort of freedom is a good thing in and of itself.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[MenTaLguY]

How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?

The vast majority of programming jobs have been, and always will be, doing custom work for a specific clients' needs (whether working in-house or as a contractor).

Free Software doesn't affect that much.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[RupW]

OK, but what fraction of the total software market is that? Are they all profitable? Is there any room in the market for anyone else?

The ones you highlighted, IBM, Novell and HP, aren't necessarily good examples: they can afford to lose money on FOSS because they make plenty elsewhere.

If no-one pays for software, only for support, the cost per support incident would have to be astronomical to sustain the industry. And is there going to be enough support work to go round? Once a bug's fixed once it's fixed for all.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[SphericalCrusher]

It's like this. People don't just use Windows because it's easy nowdays, they use it because it's easy AND all of the software that runs on it. If Linux ran all of Window's software, then there would be no reason for people to use Windows anymore, because there are user-friendly versions of Linux. Maybe of the F/OSS developers concentrated on something more along the lines of making Linux replacements for very important software, other than essential things like Open Office, The GIMP, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Windows, as I use Linux on my home network -- I'm just only thinking good business right now.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[ckaminski]

WTF is NX?

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[vadim_t]

It didn't catch on because of its quality though. HTTP was adopted because it's a simple and decent protocol, even if not perfect. Windows would have never caught on so well if Microsoft limited to delivering boxes to shops and let everybody freely choose what they wanted to run or sell.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[merdark]

IBM
Novell
HP


These companies make no money on FOSS software, their income comes from elsewhere. These also cater to the corporate market, limited. Many of the companies in your list sell proprietary software for Linux. They are banking on their proprietary components causing sales.
Also, this is an incredibly small list considering the size of the software industry. So yes, these are isolated cases.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[jgunchy]

The only thing wrong with your scenario is when the guy you hired to do all of your mission critical programming moves on.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[tolan-b]

Once bitten, twice shy?

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Tarantolato]

Man: Nothing becomes real mainstream if it's closed

Astro-Man: Yeah, that Windows product will never catch on!

Actually, this is a pretty good test-case of the limits of openness and closedness. The parent poster's example was http. One might also cite X vs. its closed competitors. The counter-example is Windows, to which one might add the entire Office suite.

Now, it strikes me that under present circumstances drop-in, single-machine solutions like desktop Windows and Office can support closedness and still be ubiquitous. Whereas things that require customization and intercommuncation between machines have to be open to really take off. Thus Flash is in a lot of places but hardly everywhere; web ActiveX content is for the moment practically forgotten.

RIght now the primary nexus between the desktop and the network is the browser. And basically this means IE these days. It's interesting to note that MS has had a lot of success in blocking new web standards, but only limited success in imposing its own non-standard functionality through IE.

As we all know MS's strategy is to fuck up the web and make it closed. The little analysis above leads me to conclude that they will have limited success, but their success will be really fucking annoying.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Drooling Iguana]

By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.

Yes, that's what typically happens when someone releases an equivalent product for a lower price than what was previously available. It's called capitalism. Some countries have tried to get away from that, but they typically don't do too well.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[fitten]

[quote]It seems that Fabian Franz from the Knoppix Project hacked up a 'FreeNX Server' based on NoMachine's NX technology (poor NoMachine might lose business now). [/quote]

Yeah, unfortunately, this is always the case. Any time some software becomes desirable, someone can make a F/OSS version of it and undermine the whole market. Welcome to F/OSS.

[quote]Heh, you obviously don't understand the point of Free software. In general, having that product available as Free software will attract much more users than the few at that particular company that might go out of business. If they are -smart-, they will assist the open source development effort, and re-tailor their business to provide expert integration solutions of FreeNX, etc.
It's all about -service- and developing code, not re-selling code over and over again without doing any work. That's the difference. They don't have to go out of business, just change their old business model.[/quote]

Your description sounds a bit like extortion...

In any case, it isn't about developing code at all. F/OSS is all about service and turning programming into a service instead of a trade. The end result is that it drives all prices to zero, even for service. For instance, I could, if I were already independently wealty, study up and devote my life to offering good/great services for free (as in beer) for any particular F/OSS software that I wanted and basically starve the folks who make the software out, effectively taking over their project. For example, if I offered support for RedHat stuff even almost as good as RedHat does, but for free, it's entirely possible that RedHat would go bankrupt because anyone could download their distributions for free and "hire" me for free. RedHat foots the bill for their folks and no return. Welcome to F/OSS.

The other thing that F/OSS enforces and encourages is mediocrity. Most folks will download for free (as in beer) anything that does a "good enough" job for what they want, even though it doesn't necessarily do anything better than other offerings and is potentially more buggy and less useful. This starves out the better application and it goes away, leaving everyone with just the "good enough" left for everyone to use and just "make do" with.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[be-fan]

The other thing that F/OSS enforces and encourages is mediocrity. Most folks will download for free (as in beer) anything that does a "good enough" job for what they want, even though it doesn't necessarily do anything better than other offerings and is potentially more buggy and less useful.

Welcome to capitalism. Capitalism encourages mediocrity, not F/OSS. People will buy the cheapest thing that is "good enough." Better products cost more money to make, and if people won't pay for the extra quality (which they usually do not), then "good enough" well win. F/OSS is really just an edge-case of the free market, where "the cheapest thing" is close to $0 in cost.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Michael Hunt]

Nomachine NX is based on earlier work by the same group called 'MLView' (the organisation is called Medialogic, if memory serves) which was GPLd.

They have ELECTED to release pretty much all of their core technology as GPL, keeping with the spirit of MLview, taking a punt that people will pay for the pretty 'enterprise' GUI stuff.

Some third party hacker has built his own implementation of the non-GPL bits. I'd say that fits in well with their chosen business model. Wouldn't you?

NoMachine

[jfholcomb]

LOL They got "NoMachine" now that it is a smoking pile of rubble.

Poor NoMachine indeed.

[FreeLinux]

(poor NoMachine might lose business now).

This is compounded by higher bandwidth charges due to their present Slashdotting. They'll be tits up in no time.

Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Shoeler]

For the rest of us, gnoppix is the best bet. On a side note - what's the real benefit for gnoppix / knoppix outside of a kiosk or classroom environment?

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[porcorosso]

It's a real easy way to get debian installed on your hard drive.

Boot up, hit Ctrl-Alt-F2, type knx-hdinstall.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Data recovery. Forensics. Learning Linux without reinstalling everything every time you trash your system. Testing hardware in a store before you purchase it. Freeing up drive space by not having an OS installed. HArdly an exaustive list.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Shoeler]

I'll buy that for a dollar.

I've used gnoppix for the past few months in our teaching lab with great results. A perfect distro load each boot time.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[BLKMGK]

In my case Knoppix-STD has been awesome! It's allowed me to play with wireless security tools that I had previously had a bitch of a time trying to configure in a standard Linux Distro. No driver fiddling, no recompiling, no patches, no hair pulling! i fire up Knoppix-STD, plug ni my Lucent card, run an applet to configure my wireless, and away I go with Kismet, Airsnort, Wallenreiter (sp?), Airtraf, and other tools like Ethereal. Knoppix has allowed me, a Windows user, to experience and get accustomed to Linux without having to worry about hosing a drive or sweating arcane drivers issues. If I screw something up or get lost I can simply reboot and be back to square one with no damage done. as soon as I figure out how to mount a USB FOB and install my own apps on it etc. I'll be well on my way to moving a Linux partition onto my HD full time :-)

IMO, Knoppix provides a terrific way to introduce people to Linux. You can also use it to (more) securely surf on strange computers if you want. I see someone has linked to soemthing called Gnoppix below this - I'll be checking that out next! Live Distros rock! :-)

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found it to be a nice tool for "caulking up" holes in many ways. So far at my research/computer scientist job, I've used it to fix a windows machine (dd, repartition, fiddle a few files) and, more interestingly, run numerical-computation intensive linux applications on the new, faster (winXP pro) management computers, many of which were sitting idle.

The Quantian variant is very good for the latter; it has almost all of the basic GNU sci/math software: R, gnuplot, octave, &c. set up and ready to "just work". It also has some built-in cluster support; drop-and-churn clustering for numerical computations sounds pretty nice, though I haven't tried that yet.

Unfortunately, the NTFS support is poor. This is probably for legal reasons rather than bona-fide technical ones. :( I am presently mulching up a USB memory stick as my home directory.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[kfg]

The biggest benefit is that you can hand a disk to someone and say, "Here, try Linux." They don't have install 'er nothin', just boot from it.

The next biggest would be that it's an ultra-super rescue disk.

And bit less important, to me at least, but still a virtue, is that you can pop it into any machine, say a friends, one at work, or a clients and run in your prefered enviroment.

KFG

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[ldspartan]

knoppix is _great_ as a recovery / analysis tool. For instance, I'm installing XP on some machine and can't figure out what kind of ethernet card it has... Linux has 'lspci', but XP just reports "Unknown network card."

I can boot into Knoppix, lspci, download the drivers I need from Intel's site, and put them on the disk for Windows to find.

Another good example is my boss, who's laptop drive crashed a few weeks ago. While he waited for a replacement, he ran everything off of Knoppix and a USB Key.

It's impressive stuff.

--
lds

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[IceFox]

As with everything in life the hardest part is the first step. Getting users to play with this Linux thing is much easier with Knoppix. People who I interact with all the time, but never wished to try Linux were willing to give Knoppix a try. Ok so maybe they don't switch the next day, but a month later when they need a tool that they saw in Knoppix they give it another whirl or when someone else talks about Linux they think... "Yah I used that, it wasn't hard... I like Linux". Maybe when they get an extra computer they decide to load Linux on it. All because you gave them a Knoppix disk.

It is a great simple way to let management play with Linux too. Where in the management world of MSOutlook and MSProject they can't load Linux on their box, but they can give Knoppix a whirl on *their* box and play with it on their own. Then when you want to use Linux for your next project they are more likely to let you because it is something they have used and doesn't seem so foreign.

It might surprise you the number of people who want to play around with Linux, but just haven't yet. I put up a small note that I was giving away Knoppix disks for free at work. I have given away (averaging two) a day for the last month. Try it at your work and see what happens. You might be surprised at whom is interested in playing with Linux.

-Benjamin Meyer

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Lussarn]

It is also a good place to start if you want more graphics in a gentoo install. Knoppix sometimes find hardware better then the gentoo install CD and it has all that is needed to install it. Which of course is basically nothing if you have a net connection.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[tyrotyro]

The latest Knoppix Version I used, 3.4 (2004-05-10), has support for Captive NTFS (http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/). This lets you use your existing Windows XP NTFS drivers to mount NTFS partitions.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Long-EZ]

...what's the real benefit for gnoppix / knoppix outside of a kiosk or classroom environment?

If you had watched The Broken, Volume 3 (available online, try BitTorrent), you'd know that you can use a Knoppix CD to circumvent a Windows login, and even use it to grab the hashed password, take it back to the shop and crank on it for 15 minutes to 30 days and crack it.

remove(black_hat)
install(white_hat)
Plus, all that other nice stuff everyone mentioned.

I should go to Staples and spend $13 on the shrink wrapped 100 CD-R fun pack, burn Knoppix on all of them, then substitute them for the heinous stack of AOL CDs in the foyer of Orifice Depot and Staples. It might even be fun to make them look like AOL CDs. Heh heh heh. Wake up, sheeple! Sometimes, people don't know what they want until they actually see it for the first time.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[Tarantolato]

Boot up, hit Ctrl-Alt-F2, type knx-hdinstall.

Do not believe the hype. This works as long as you do not want to add significant functionality to the existing Knoppix base. If you do, apt-get is likely to get all tangled up and nasty. knx-hdinstall is an experimental program and should not be considered the preferred easy way to install Debian - although it's very nice when it works.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[linefeed0]

I'm sorry, no. Gnoppix is for some idiotic reason based on debian stable. I run debian stable as a sysadmin on old workhorse machines which are used primarily as servers (including command-line timesharing, so not just "invisible" machines). I can't stand running it more than a year after its typical release on a desktop -- the linux desktop is moving fast and woody already lacks a lot of hardware support. I honestly don't know how the gnoppix folks are compensating for this with hardware detection and all. Also, I know gnoppix has modern gnome packages, but they're backports, which makes them different from debian testing by default, and it's just one more variable to debug. There's really no point in basing a bootcd on stable; it's like basing a bootcd on RHEL.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[duncanatlk]

I use it for 'cloning' Windows system (much like Ghost). I use included partimage to save a drive image to our network, and then restore it to a similar box.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[thinkninja]

No, no, no.

knx-hdinstall will get Knoppix installed on your hard drive, not Debian. If you then try and move from Knoppix to Debian using apt you may have major issues. Debianites will not help you with these because you are not using Debian...

If you want Debian, install Debian (oh look, new installer and it needs testing).

Try this*:

echo debian > 1; echo knoppix > 2; diff --report-identical-files 1 2

Proof positive that Knoppix isn't Debian!

* Stolen from Mister dpkg.

Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd...

[lucas teh geek]

what the heck is a FOB? is thats just another name for a pendrive you'll probably get it mounted with

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

of course, you'll have to create the /mnt/usb folder, and depending on which usb port you plug into it could be /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 etc. hope thats what you were after

Kudos to developers

[Metteyya]

It seems that Knoppix doesn't stop surprising everyone, being probably the most innovative Linux distro (introduced LiveCD and great hardware detection).
It would be great if other distro's developers tried going the same way - be innovative, be creative!. Now it's quite boring to have hundred of Kno* and *pix distros, every one built with philosophy "take Knoppix and replace two apps with your favourite ones".
Is there any way to financially support Knoppix?

Re:Kudos to developers

[iomanip]

I don't know, ask microsoft.

Re:Kudos to developers

[zulux]

What the hell is "innovative" or "creative" about stealing someone elses product idea and reimplemting it under open source?

What the hell, it happens in commercial software all the time. Jucst because the Free software poeple do it now and then doesen't make it any more whong.

MS-DOS/Quick and Dirty DOS copied CP/M
Word copied WordPerfect
Excel copies Lotus 123 who copied VisiCalc
Windows coped Mac who copied Xerox

Re:Kudos to developers

[EnglishTim]

I should point out that NoMachine's MX was (IIRC) based on existing GPLed Free Software, so this isn't stealing any more than it was for NoMachine to take that GPLed code and make a product out of it. The source code for their stuff is on their website, it's just that another group has now taken that code and put it together in an easier-to-compile distribution. (If I understand the post correctly - I could not reach the Kalyxo webpage...)

Re:Kudos to developers

[iomanip]

Damn, replied to the trolled post.

I, for one, feel sorry for them

[geighaus]

First, free GPL'ed version of their chief product. Now, their server is slashdotted. Damn, what a bad day for them

Re:I, for one, feel sorry for them

[illogic]

um, no, actually most of their product is GPL, and they *actively encouraged* a completely free version of NX. on their site is a HOWTO run an NX session using only GPL components. they've advertised for months on their frontpage that KDE wants to make a Free version of NX. they give away for free their proprietary servers to any open source developer, even if their stated purpose is "just to play around" -- it literally says that on their website.

yes, they did get exactly what they deserved: widespread adoption of their own technology that will boost their credibility and sales. sheesh.

Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[jbwiv]

I've always made out quite well with running a VNC connection through a compressed ssh pipe, like so:

$ ssh -f -CNL5901:localhost:5901 mylogin@myremotemachine

$ vncviewer localhost:1

How's NX any different/better? When it first came out, I gave it a look but didn't think speed was overly impressive...

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[hackel]

As the original post said, you can reconnect to disconnected sessions, which is nice. A VNC can't do that if the SSH tunnel is broken. I also currently launch VNC from inetd, and once that connection's broken, there's no way to re-connect to it. I'm definitely looking forward to checking out FreeNX!

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the server:
vncserver -localhost

On the client
ssh -L5901:localhost:5901 servername
vncviewer localhost:1

There you go. The server is persistent. If the ssh connection goes down, just reconnect and restart the viewer.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[Alien Being]

"A VNC can't do that if the SSH tunnel is broken."

Huh? You can establish a new tunnel and re-connect to the still running session.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[4lex]

I must be unknowingly running FreeNX (under an alias to vncviewer). If vncserver is still alive, you can *always* reconnect to the session, from any computer! I use a knoppix CD, ssh -X to my machine and vncviewer my vnc session, and it works great!

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[spif]

use x0rfbserver instead. it lets you connect to an existing X session with VNC, instead of having to spawn a new Xvnc session from vncserver.

It's available as part of a Dag Wieers RPM, so if you're running Red Hat or Fedora Core you're set. And of course the source is a google away.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[iantri]

It's far faster than VNC -- think how X runs over a 100mbit network except over, NX gives that performance over a 1.5mbit DSL connection. It is still tolerable at 56k (more so than VNC, in my own experience).

(By the way, it is actually just connecting to your X server with nxproxy over an SSH link.)

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[fodder69]

He is smart enough to know how to setup up inetd to launch VNC, but not smart enough to realize that that is the stupidest way to do it? Since, yes it shuts itself down when the connection is dropped. The other posters show the way any intelligent person would set up VNC.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[EdMcMan]

Because it uses protocol specific compression and caches, it's much faster than using simply ssh compression (which knows nothing about what it's carrying).

You can read about it on the NX website.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[Bingo Foo]

Uhhhh.... You are using X11 over a remote ssh tunnel to "locally" view a VNC session. (i.e., VNC client and server are running on the same machine.) This is not the best use of VNC, and in fact the ONLY benefit you get from using VNC in that case is reconnectability.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[Fourier]

As I understand it, NX probably won't give you a huge improvement over compressed ssh on a local network. The big gains come in high latency networks (e.g. internet), as the NX server can eliminate a lot of expensive and unnecessary delays due to X11 round-trips.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[msh104]

The greaters advantage is that is has ultra high compression. this is where we look at citrix like bandwith usage. multiple connection over one 56k line. vnc really sucks on slow connections.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[puppetluva]

The point is that you can run MANY sessions from the same server, detatch from any of them, see a list of active sessions, and reattach at a later time. That is why people compare it to "screen" on the command line.

VNC can't do that at all.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[snol]

x0rfbserver hasn't been updated in forever. Use X11VNC to export your local X display. I spent forever looking for x0rfb updates before I found that. It's much more stable, faster, and has better compression options.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[4lex]

I agree :)

But reconnectability is great, specially when you mantain the same session across differents computers, some of them with windows (with which I have to use knoppix, in order both not to be tainted and not to break anything). I am somewhat of a newbie and always have problems with my hosts.allow and hosts.deny... so it's better (for me!) just to allow ssh, and do everything the "ssh -XC" way.

Genuine question: what are the other benefits from vnc, aside from reconnectability and (lossful) compression?

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[Bingo Foo]

what are the other benefits from vnc,

The compression is one very good benefit. It is not simple zip-like compression of the data stream, but a somewhat smart image compression which takes advantage of the fact that it is usually transmitting a desktop with draggable rectangular windows. Compression can be optimized on special cases like that.

Multiple simultaneous desktops is something more to do with X11 than VNC, but VNC is a good way to realize this through multiple servers. Also, VNC is cross platform so you can view your desktop on a Mac or Windows machine with all native apps and no client-side X11 whatsoever, or view a Mac or Windows desktop on your favorite unix-like box.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[MyHair]

The parent poster is using inetd to launch VNC which can be cool--basically a session-based terminal server usable by any VNC client where multiple clients can grab indivual sessions from one port--but of course this doesn't offer reconnecability. (Usually you will start a session using XDMCP to log into a VNC desktop.)

hackel, the 'normal' way of running VNC is to have a VNC server dameon running and listening on one port. It's stateless so you can reconnect to it later. But it's not very good as a terminal server fore more than one person.

I hadn't heard of FreeNX, but another poster in another part of this thread says FreeNX can have multiple reconnectable sessions, but unlike VNC where you have to specify the port FreeNX has a mechanism for listing and choosing one of the available sessions. Okay, that sounds freakin' cool.

Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh?

[hackel]

Sorry, I meant from inetd.

Re:VNC

[jrcamp]

VNC performance has always been unacceptable to me, even on LAN's. NX uses the X11 protocol, but it encrypts (via SSH) and compresses by itself so you don't have to open an SSH tunnel, etc. It can also play the sound on the local host.

TightVNC is great

[jonasmit]

and not a real bandwidth hog so hopefully someone can illuminate why this might be better.

Re:TightVNC is great

[cduffy]

TightVNC is still horrifically slow (and somewhat bandwidth-consumptive) compared to RDP -- try them side-by-side some time.

Re:TightVNC is great

[fodder69]

I don't know if I would say horrifically slow, but it is probably 2-3 times slower than a comparable RDP connection. Maybe someone who knows more about the RDP protocol can illuminate the reasons why?

Some have said it's because it uses windows calls, etc. but if that were the case how come the free rdesktop works so well from linux connecting to my win2K boxes?

Re:TightVNC is great

[LinuxHam]

not sure if you mean RDP the protocol or if there is an app called RDP, but when I use rdesktop on a local LAN connecting from a fully updated RH9 box to a Win2k server, I literally have to wrap the command line in a do ; rdesktop server ; done loop because it crashes every 2 to 5 minutes. It may be quicker but the protocol SUCKS in my experience and collapses wayyyy too frequently. My customer won't install VNC, either, which sucks since with TS you can't (deeply) admin a server anyway. Hell, some people here still insist on configuring NetMeeting to accept all calls and automatically share the desktop with all callers! Dumb asses.

Re:TightVNC is great

[walt-sjc]

Sounds more like a network problem. I've kept rdesktop sessions opened for days over the internet.

While wicked slow, I also do low-level management with the compaq ILO with Advanced license that give a full remote graphical desktop via java / web browser. Very handy when the server is having problems booting.

Re:TightVNC is great

[cduffy]

Oh, that's easy. It's all in the wire protocol.

The Linux equivalent would be moving GTK calls (not X calls, but GTK calls) over the wire. Because these are higher-level, they transfer much less data over the wire than moving your lower-level X calls (or VNC's encoding of the raw data, which also can't take advantage of anything above the bitplane layer).

The free clients just also implement these higher-level, lower-bandwidth constructs, which is why they're still able to work.

Re:TightVNC is great

[Spy Hunter]

In my experience, the Windows Remote Desktop client is much faster than the Unix one, and more reliable too. It's not the protocol, it's the client.

You are wrong

[RenatoRam]

NoMachine had opensourced the NX products, so anybody has the legal right of forking and renaming it.

Nothing particularly new: firms will continue to give money to NoMachine for support and administration tools.

Have fun...

Re:You are wrong

[warpSpeed]

Nothing particularly new: firms will continue to give money to NoMachine for support and administration tools.

And... NoMachine is free to incorporate anything put into the forked versions of the code back into its code tree.

Poor NoMachine ?

[gmuslera]

That looked like an apology for closed formats...Poor Adobe, they opened most of the PDF specification and lose business too, of course, doing that also helped to make their specification almost an universal standard, feasible to be used in organizations without the problems related to closed formats (arbitrary changes from vendor, disappearing vendor, low extensibility, etc) and in the long run increased the market for them.

NoMachine opening the specification of what they do just will have a different market if the use of they technology standarizes enough. That will open doors to they own extensions, support, being anyway as the visible head of that technology, etc. I think that some of the ESR writings explain a bit better the advantages of doing that.

Nomachine is safe from Slashdotting!

[ptelligence]

No really I wish they weren't slashdotted so that I could read more about this awesome technology that won't make them a quarter.

Screen for a GUI...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is something we're supposed to be able to do already. See again the now archaic 'xmove' project, a X11 proxy that still works today... as long as you don't intend to use any X extensions, or 3D, and so on. Oops. (Hey, at least you can run XMMS with it, sort of. This is actually a 'failing' of the X architecture, in that it's too flexible for its own good. Look into the reasons why xmove can't handle extensions for enlightenment.)

NX has long seemed like pretty cool stuff; I'm not sure if they've baked the 3D aspect, or exactly how well it works in person, but a completely Free version -- especially if it proves a lifesaver as regards emulating 'Fast User Switching' on a single UNIX desktop -- can only improve the market for their services/support business and so on.

As far as I remember...

[EnglishTim]

As far as I remember, NoMachine's NX software is based on GPL code, which means they had no choice but to release the source code.

I remember trying to build it from source when it first came out, but it proved rather tricky. It's nice that someone's now put in the time to make an easy-to-compile distribution of it.

Strange Bedfellows

[daves]

A quick Google search led to interesting results. What do RMS and these ladies have to do with a server?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient& ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=freenx

Re:Strange Bedfellows

[illogic]

um, a webmaster's attempt at getting traffic based on unrelated keywords? the Free Software version of "XXX hardcore amateur warez serialz isoz"...

Description

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Would someone in the know please describe NX software, and how it relates to screen, remove X sessions, and VNCs? It seems many people, (including myself), don't understand how all of these work, (or maybe have a basic understanding of each but no inter-relational understanding), or the state or remote GUI linux in general.

NoMachines

[Qwavel]

It's great that this technology can now be incorporated directly into distributions, but I'm sorry that this couldn't be done with NoMachines rather than against them.

The vast majority of companies don't create Linux products, they create Windows products, so any company that creates new software for Linux should be appreciated, even if that software is closed source.

I'm definately not suggesting that any company involved in Linux should be given a free ride, I'm just saying that we shouldn't celebrate having outflanked a company that was contributing something to Linux.

BTW, I don't know anything about NoMachines in particular. Also, generally I think that the necessity of software being open source and free depends on where it fits into your system. Personally I don't mind close source applications, but I like to have my GUI toolkit open and free.

For those looking for MoMachine info...

[missing000]

Newsforge article

Potential source for FreeNX Server

Re:A day late and a dollar short

[proj_2501]

emacs can do that! what other apps do you need anyway?

what NX is

[CoJoNEs]

This was linked from NoMachine's site, somehow I got to it before it died.
http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/07/10/2146247 .shtml?tid=11
from the article:
Thin client computing lets users run applications on a remote server and display the results locally. NX Client works something like VNC (see our recent story), but instead of using Remote Frame Buffer protocol, NX Client acts as an X Window server. Thin clients help contain costs by eliminating the need to install applications at each user's desktop, and improve security by limiting the availability of applications and data. The clients themselves can be dedicated hardware devices or regular computers running thin client software.

Re:VNC

[Leomania]

Like anything else, it depends upon what you're trying to do and how much performance you need/want.

Me, I use TightVNC over a VPN tunnel (cable modem) and it has acceptable performance. I do pay a performance hit when I use a graphical program such as a place & route tool (I'm an ASIC engineer) but it's by no means unusable.

Of course, I have been forced to use that same place & route tool over a 128Kbit ISDN line (years ago) so I'm quite pleased with what VNC allows me to do, both in terms of speed but more importantly in terms of freedom. When you do ASIC layout work for a living, you sacrifice a lot of family time if you can't detach/reattach ala VNC. So I'm pretty damned thankful.

That's not to say I don't welcome new applications if they better meet my needs. I'll be delighted to learn more about what NX offers just as soon as I can actually visit the proferred links!

- Leo

What is NX

[Anonymous Coward]

NoMachine's NX is a thin client that is similar to VNC with Windows compatibility. They claim it works on a 9600 baud connection.

http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/07/10/21462 47.shtml?tid=11

Re:VNC

[zoso]

NX is about networking - high latency/long distance(many hops) - are enough to run X applications.

Printing support. Connect to remote NX server - and print on your local printer.

Multimedia support - launch xmms remotely and hear the sound in your headphones ....

Try this link

[missing000]

Introduction to NX technology

Bad name

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody mentioned what's FreeNX so I google'd it - it means porn in some parts of the world.

Time to think up another name?

Re:WTF is FreeNX??

[zoso]

NX uses CUPS for printing support so you can print from remote servers to your local printers using the IPP 1.1 protocol. It's possible also to use my local printers exported by SAMBA which is quite useful ...

Re:VNC

[eSims]

No mod points.... can't mod troll....

VNC is only unacceptably slow if it is not configured correctly. I regularly (read EVERYday) use VNC via ssh to connect to work and run my full Linux desktop as well as Windows under VMware (stupid corp policy w/ Outlook) and it is both fast and efficient.

In fact I can sit anywhere on the Coporate LAN (Fortune 500 Co) and efficiently work from my desk. I have sat at all flavors of Unix, windows, heck even a Mac to work and before long probably my Phone ;-).

My point is this: Don't discount an App (especially such a widely used app) just becuase you haven't figured out how to use it efficiently. (useability is a separate discussion.)

Re:VNC

[I confirm I'm not a]

My one time using VNC (ThinVNC, IIRC) was over a dial-up connection. Unacceptable doesn't even begin to describe it.

SSH over a LAN? Bloody luxery! (Obligatory "Kids these days" comment)

Put it in a more positive light

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that they might lose business, its inclusion in the Knoppix distro means people are more likely to be exposed to it and buy into it for their company. Don't think that as people rise up the ladder they always forget their roots. Now I'm getting into a position in life where I make the decisions about what software to deploy it's actually a major moral and financial decision how
to support and feed back into open projects.
My business thinking right now is to support small local projects (British and European for me) and broader organisations that foster and support Open projects like EFF. Funds are less likely to go to projects that are already making their own commercial noises, but of course I wish them the best of luck. Im sure they recognise that funds don't always have to flow directly to the originator, that Open source is a broad movement and sometimes unfair to contributers. So, in summary - small donations to the little local guys, and larger orgs. In the middle ground we usually hope to contribute by returning non-sensitive code imporovements back into the CVS.

I liked it the first time...

[omega9]

...when it was called Citrix.

Re:I liked it the first time...

[ckaminski]

... when it was called X Window System.

I'm not sure if any multiuser graphical windows systems preceded X, I'm not old enough to remember.

Citrix took the X foundation and added useful features like local file and printer sharing.

introduction to NX

[zoso]

There was nice article about the NX:

http://www.orangecrate.com/article.php?sid=677

Re:VNC

[TheCrazyFinn]

VNC is only acceptable until you try RDP or Citrix, and experience what performance is possible over a remote link.

RDP is king for WAN links, X11 for LAN links and VNC sucks on both. ANd yes, I've tried TightVNC, it's better than standard VNC, but still sucks in comparison with the competition

I just wish Apple would license RDP for OS X, then my life would be complete.

Re:Terminal services

[Anonymous Coward]

Essentially. Except it uses X with some additional compression techniques.

Sad Day

[PktLoss]

Is it a sad day when the papers linked to on slashdot are no more credible than the comments posted in reply to them?

Fix Wine

[NoWhere Man]

In thier 3.4 release they had integrated wine (perhaps even before that, but they made it fairly obvious in 3.4), unfortunately it doesn't work. Even after countless configuration attempts it seems like a flawed addition to the distro.

Its something I was looking forward to aswell...

Re:Fix Wine

[NoWhere Man]

This is what I posted on the bug tracker

Wine will not load applications. Error "wine: cannot find .exe" I've tried a few applications like ?MiniSoft 92 for Windows and Winamp. I've gone through the configuration a few times. I've added the drive/directories to the default path where the program is located. There were no spaces in the filenames or directories

Its entirely possible I am missing something in the config process.

Re:VNC

[zoso]

argh I forgot to mention the disk shareing - so you export your local disk/home directory to the remote server trough SMB that is encapsulated in NX protocol and here it comes - you can use your files on remote server copy them/edit them and do whatever you want in secure way without the need to scp every few minutes.

"Poor NoMachine"

[iantri]

Just to clear things up, this is no problem for NoMachine at all -- NoMachine has released the core components as GPL -- the only non-GPL parts of NX are the client software GUI,, which simplifies the setup of basically (under Windows) cygwin ssh + X + nxproxy, and under Linux, just a GUI for ssh+ X + nxproxy.

NX is even mildly supportive of an open-source complete solution -- on the source download page (their site is ./'ed right now) it clearly says something to the effect that they expect a community-created packages will be assembled.

Emacs????

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I've already GOT an operating system, why would I want another one?....

(insert obligatory "it's just a joke" disclaimer here...)

Re:A day late and a dollar short

[hummassa]

This is *not* a totally different alternative, is just an *optimized* version of the X Window Protocol (not X WindowS). BTW, to move a window from an X session to another is perfectly possible.

Connect to windows from Linux?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

It's not obvious from what I've been able to connect to so far that isn't slashdotted as to whether you can connect to a Windows box from a Linux box (the orangecrate.com article linked further down shows a connection going from a windows box to a linux box)

That's actually 2 questions, though - "Does the technology support it" AND "does the LICENSE allow it?"

I'm assuming that the technical capability is there (just as it is in VNC)...

Last time I saw the EULA for a recent Windows version I saw in infamous "you may not connect with 3rd-party tools" clause in the license. Is that still there? Is using FreeNX (or VNC or anything else) to connect to a windows box remotely still a violation of the license?

Re:Connect to windows from Linux?

[hopethishelps]

Last time I saw the EULA for a recent Windows version I saw in infamous "you may not connect with 3rd-party tools" clause in the license. Is that still there? Is using FreeNX (or VNC or anything else) to connect to a windows box remotely still a violation of the license?

If this is indeed in the Windows license, it's clearly illegal for a monopolist to impose such a condition, so don't worry about it. But is it really in the license, or is the parent just trolling?

X-integration

[Per Wigren]

I was reading about NX a few months ago and saw that someone is writing a NX-extension for X11 so you can just ssh to a box, set DISPLAY to something like "nx/192.168.0.1:0,port=6789,ssl=1" and run single applications using the NX protocol, MUCH MUCH faster than plain old remote X. It also enables you to "take over" an existing session. It requires that the extension is enabled on both X-servers. Unfortunatly their site is currently slashdotted so I can't find a link..

NX seem similar to dxpc

[tbuskey]

Well, the X protocol compression at least.

It seems to be X protocol compression and conversion of RDP (terminal server) and mumble to X protocol for speedier access.

Re:NX seem similar to dxpc

[linefeed0]

It's based on dxpc, actually. If the site weren't slashdotted I'd throw you a link.

Re:VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the best protocol for a LAN link is X11 by a wide margin. I consider myself an expert since I work all day my customers remote computers using some form of remote software. I also and very familiar with the low level details of RDP and RFB having written code for both. Here is my order list from fastest to slowest for LAN(10 or 100) and WAN links(1.5mbps)

LAN:
X11
ICA (Citrix)
RDPv5
PcAnyWhere
RFB with Hextile encoding (VNC)

WAN:
ICA
RDPv5
NX
RFB with Tight encoding
PcAnyWhere
Webex
X11

I have never tired NX over a LAN, but it would probably be pointless. Note the NX over a WAN seems as fast as RDP, but since I have only tried NX from one server and with the differences between the Linux/Windows desktop, its hard to tell for sure which is better.

Speed is only half the story though. VNC's biggest bonus is that the server client are very portable, small and safe to install. ICA is the best, but not widely avaliable. RDP is more common now that all servers and XP workstations have it.

However, I still use VNC over RDP because of NAT firewalls. VNC has an option where the server can connect to the client which allows me to connect to basically any computer in the world with Internet access and a 700kb download. A poor mans webex except faster and easier to use.

Halfway between Citrix and VNC

[charnov]

Think stateless migratable multiuser VNC sessions (last time I checked VNC was not multiuser...only one desktop after all). NoMachines product gets a lot closer to Citrix, which is one of three killer apps on Windows that does not have a decent analog in Linux (also Quark XPress [Scribus doesn't come close], Citrix [no X11 isn't even the same type of idea, neither is VNC], and unfortunately, Exchange (although SuSe's OpenExchange server is very, very close).

Re:Halfway between Citrix and VNC

[iserlohn]

What do you mean not multiuser? In *nix you can open up as many XVNC servers as you want. You can have multiple user doing their own stuff in their own session. You can also have multiple users connected to one session, so you get desktop sharing.

The only thing the NX buys is speed, and that's really true. NX is very very fast, faster than RDP5 I would say.

If you're on a LAN, you don't even need them. You can have Citrix or Windows Terminal like services by just using X and XDMCP and XDM. That's what the LTSP uses.

Re:Halfway between Citrix and VNC

[dickens]

add MS Access to the list...

great

[gngulrajani]

i just spent 2 days trying to get nxproxy/nxagent
running with only limited success. The nomachine docs are outdated and imo obfuscated.

go knoppix people.
-greg

KDE NX?

[illogic]

I wonder how this affects the proposed KDE/NX integration supposedly under development by Aaron Seigo? If you'll remember, this was mentioned way back in December in response to UserLinux shipping Gnome, but I haven't heard anything about it since... let's hope this FreeNX is desktop-independent.

For those still mystified as to what NX is, it is essentially X11 tunneled through SSH, with some clever caching to drastically limit the number of connections an X server/client need to make, to make the connection feel much quicker.

untechnical explanation: Normally a remote X session will have to make many hundreds/thousands of trips between the server and client, but NX uses a cache at both ends, only making the most necessary trips, and usually just sending a diff of the changes rather than the whole stream of data. (roughly speaking, of course, as I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.)

Re:A day late and a dollar short

[ArsonSmith]

I wish there was a screen for xwindows. Some way to run programs perhapse through a $DISPLAY proxy that you could instruct to land on any real $DISPLAY you want.

something like:

# display_proxy xeyes
-would land xeyes on your currnt desktop except you would have an extra option (needs support form window manager) to disconnect from your current $DISPLAY.

# display_proxy -connect xeyes
-would reconnect you to the running xeyes and direct it to what every $DISPLAY you are currently on.

I know there was a project to create xmove i think it was that had the same effect in a completly diffrent way and required application support.

Wish I was an X programmer.

Good use of X...finally

[fikx]

I like the looks of the NX technology. It looks like someone finally took the X protocol for what it should be: a base to build cool stuff on. I've seen a lot of software projects that either use X-like ideas but loose the benfits of it, or try to add all kinds of wonky things to X itself to get some new piece of functionality out of it.
To my mind, X is a framework that stuff can be built on. The fact that it doesn't add things like persistent sessions and compression/encryption have seemed like a good thing to me. I like the idea of being able to swap out one comperssion technology for another without recoding the X-standard, or have an app that can display on multiple X-servers without having to hack at the architecture.

From what I've read so far (this is the first I've heard of this tech) it looks like we've got someone thinking about X in a useful way, they are a company which makes a good product, and they are linux and OSS friendly. Is there a loss here? I sure don't see it. I'm just sad I hadn't heard of all this until now!

windows version

[charnov]

Sorry...I as refering to the windows version. The project I work on deals with pushing multiple Windows desktops. The only two things that work the way we want on Windows is Tarantella and Citrix. We are currently looking at using vmware ESX server to push multiple windows desktops (esx runs via a custom linux) via RDP. The whole goal is to eliminate the the need for Citrix or terminal server licenses. Windows on the desktop is a must because of software lock-in (iManage).

Also, anyone now how to push a single application (not the whole desktop) to a windows (or linux/unix) machine via either VNC or X11 a la nFuse? Its one of the features we are locked into with Citrix.

Re:windows version

[who what why]

You can use the Cygwin/X server (also Xwin, a commercial product) which runs in a multi-window or rootless mode. This will allow you to run any remote X app in it's own window with Windows widgets for the titlebar, close buttons etc. It's pretty simple to setup (Xwin is even easier IMHO, but I have no idea how much it costs).

I don't think VNC can currently do anything like this, although I recall hearing it as a feature they might work towards.

Of course, this won't help if the app you want to export is running no a remote windows server, but it would work just the same for client machines is running X on *nix.

Re:What does screen do?

[lucidvein]

Here is a terrific intro to using screen... http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935

Re:VNC

[TheCrazyFinn]

Well, as I said, X11 is better for LAN links.

And ICA is the basis for RDP (It's really RDPv4), RDP performs better over WAN links, and with higher colour depths, but the ICA client is more mature and portable.

You just had to ask!

[ErikTheRed]

Ultra-super rescue disk: Insert Linux

Bootable from a 3.5" CDR...

Knoppix 3.6?

[Trogre]

Knoppix 3.5 isn't even out yet (well, the free-for-download version, anyway).

You can order the CD along with tickets to LinuxTag, but that's not much good for those of us not in Deutschland.

TightVNC....

[garagecartel]

....is really awesome, I use it myself and have done many great things with it and Knoppix both. I think that there is becoming a wide variety of corporate entity's finally starting to see these things as well and hopefully will more and more help out GNU projects to better both their projects and ours here in the OSS world.

Will knoppix ever go debian sid(unstable)?

[Sark666]

Knoppix is very popular live cd but what I didn't like for installing it was that it was a mixed source debian setup. I'd much prefer it would go sid like morphix.

Cause its five times faster.

[Nailer]

SSH compression is 12:1
NX compression is 60:1

Thanks for a coherent explanation!

[billstewart]

Nomachine.com's web page sure doesn't say anything useful, and you've done it in one sentence! I couldn't even tell if NX's use of the term "server" was the database terminology ("server's a program on a big box in the back room and client's an application on your desktop that connects to it") or the X Windows terminology ("server's a program on your desktop that draws stuff, and client's an application that runs somewhere, like on the big database server box in the back room.")

Looks like VNC

[rofthorax]

Its VNC I tell ya..

Hmm Makes me wonder if Slashdot is being bought up
by Microsoft or someone.. Wonder if they are buying int PR Marketing.. aka Selling Out..

Bad Web design - download more pages

[billstewart]

Back before it got slashdotted, I checked out web page to see what NX was. If they even put a sentence or two at the top of their web page saying "NX is an accelerated replacement for the X Windows transmission protocol" or something more precise than that, I wouldn't have had to check out the screenshots page to see if that would provide any more information about what the product did. It didn't, but it burned a bunch more bandwidth not saying what the product does.