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NX Compression Technology To Go Closed Source
An anonymous reader writes "NoMachine has sneakily revealed it is closing its source of the NX compression technology with NX 4.0: 'This release marks an important milestone in the history of the company. Version 4.0 of the software, in fact, will be only available under a closed source license.'"
"NoMachine has sneakily revealed..."
That's quite remarkable.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Perhaps I don't remember it right, but in my recollection, NoMachine has always been a bit possessive with their (definitely impressive) technology. To the point that lesser alternatives have continued to be used and even developed.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
why else would they close their source when the compression industry is already saturated with near optimal free products?
Someone will come along and make a better opensource alternative to it.
Rather than bitch about how they're making it closed source, or dismissing the gesture entirely, maybe this should be taken as a sign that the problem NX solves needs a different solution. Like, oh I don't know... maybe revising the X windows protocol so it doesn't suck so hard it has its own event horizon?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Here is an explanation of what NX compression technology is.
There's no need to reverse engineer anything. Version 3 is there, and no one is going to give a damn about 4.
Anyone who feels the open version lacks something is free to extend it on their own. If not... well... it's not going to stop working outright, and at least security bugs will be fixed in a timely manner.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The problem with trying to hide something in a tl;dr changelog is that Someone - somewhere - WILL read the change log, and likely make mention of anything out of the ordinary on their blog.
In fact - I went to renew my Xbox live Gold membership a month ago or so... And they said that the terms and conditions of the service had changed since I last was on Gold. So I decided I would read through them. However - to continue this anecdote and help explain why it might be remotely funny - is that I had previously set my regional settings of my Xbox to Spain, and language to Spanish - so that when I got achievements in Halo 3 they came up as a different language. It's true, you can go and change it to like, Korean, then get some achievements, and no matter what language you go from there on out - they will come up in whatever language you achieved them in. I did this for a while, finding it to be of great amusement when someone new came over to my house and just happened to look at which achievements I had.
Anyways, so this ended up backfiring on me because the EULA and TOC of Live was now in Spanish, but I thought perhaps there was English at the bottom. However, there is no fast scroll when looking at the TOC - its very slow and you have to hold the analog stick down. To my dismay, there wasn't English. Afraid that going next would Mean I accepted to terms I didn't actually agree too - I quickly pulled up my computer and typed it in verbatim the entire thing into Google Translator.
If you've ever tried reading legalese in a language you do not understand - I highly recommend you NEVER EVER try it. Even after going through an internet translator you still will have no idea what the heck they are saying.
In hindsight I probably just should have not accepted the terms, gone and changed my language settings, and then gone through it - but I guess that seems obvious now, it didn't back then.
I am trying to think of any company that has closed their source and been more successful and I can't think of any. It sure didn't help SSH. NX used to be really great and a number of people I know used it. But I don't know any one that still does.
I am a real CLI addict, but some things still require a GUI.
For example comparing a server's /etc tree with another one, and applying changes.I found Meld to be great for that. But to be able to effectively run Meld on an otherwise headless remote server, connected through a slow ADSL link, I need NX.
Plain X forwarding is fine on a LAN, but it's not really usable over ADSL.
Except VNC lets you control a Windows/Unix/Mac machine from a Windows/Unix/Mac machine just fine. Unlike NX.
The reason that the "core" bits of NX were always Free is because dxpc (and, thus, mlview-dxpc, from which NX sprang) is only available under the GPL.
If i was involved in dxpc (or mlview-dxpc, really, although I'd imagine most of those changes are owned by the NX folks) development I'd be lawyering up at this point, if only to get some kind of proof that I wasn't being ripped off.
You're doing it wrong.
Well, I thought exactly the same thing as the grandparent - "sneakily revealed" is a fairly remarkable statement.
The link is "http://www.nomachine.com/news-read.php?idnews=331", so it would appear that it's on a regular news portion of their site - hardly sneaky. Furthermore, it's mentioned in the very first paragraph.
Rome, Italy, December 21, 2010 - NoMachine, a global leader in cross platform remote access and application delivery solutions, announced a software preview of its upcoming new products and technologies which offer a completely redesigned client GUI and restructure its flagship suite of NX Server. The new products will not only extend the current functionalities of NX application delivery and remote access products, there will also be new naming conventions adopted. This release marks an important milestone in the history of the company. Version 4 of the software, in fact, will be only available under a closed source license.
Beats me how they're being sneaky about doing it, at any rate. Shall we agree that the summary is (shock, stunner, surprise!) badly written, or at least very biased, and go on to debating the impact of the move?
Anyways, so this ended up backfiring on me because the EULA and TOC of Live was now in Spanish,
Nobody expects the Spanish interpretation!
Version 3 is in fact very good, but not perfect. It seems to have problems if the client is on a system with multiple monitors. Also, I have seen crashes when I full-screen SOC-Encounter. An update/bug fix would be very welcome.
This product is simply the BEST remote software for *NIX systems, period. VNC (all flavors) runs like an absolute dog compared to NX and, depending on the program, it as times completely unusable, while NX is generally very smooth.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Not sure why you'd think that. There are a lot of people who want to do remote X (more remote than LAN), and NX currently seems to be the best, most convenient tool for that job.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
VNC only offers a low form of control compared to what I get out of NX(IIRC, I never could get VNC to recognize more than 3 buttons on my mouse but I need the use of all 5), or rdesktop for that matter, and you don't need any special ports open, just SSH. And to top it off, NX offers better compression which is why they're likely closing the source. I have tried to convince NoMachine to make a Windows version but apparently they don't care about it despite my offers of wealth.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I was just using NX last night to connect to my Linux work machine from home. I've used VNC but my experience is that NX is much faster over my internet connection (20/8) than VNC was over a LAN, and this is running NX on Windows in a VM on my Linux box (because I've had some issues with the VPN in Linux).
NX is a lot more intelligent than VNC in that it caches a lot of stuff on the client side and is X aware. I.e. it keeps track of X bitmaps and will use jpeg compression on them when sending them across, renders fonts locally, etc. It is *MUCH* more responsive than running an X app remotely over ssh.
I've found NX to be quite usable even when the available bandwidth is fairly low whereas VNC would be useless. It actually seemed faster to run my web browser over NX rather than running it locally.
Sometimes I wish it could behave more like running a remote X application without having to bring up the entire desktop, but other than I'm a convert.
I've also seen a lot of VNC servers get borked where a VNC session suddenly starts gobbling up 100% of the CPU. I don't know if that's been fixed yet, but it was a major problem when I used it.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Microsoft intentionally makes dealing with XBox Live extremely difficult and time-consuming. You can't unregister to stop their billing charges online - you have to call & wait. Cancel the credit card? They lock the account (stop providing the service) but keep accumulating charges, then hit you with back charges if you ever put in a valid card number. They're jerks.
Well NX is a totally different thing to VNC anyway isn't it? I mean it's not just sending pixel data, which is all VNC ever does, even if it is compressed pixel data. NX to me is a Unix-flavoured version of RDP where it does clever stuff. Only it is tied to a platform too which is its biggest downfall.
For example comparing a server's /etc tree with another one, and applying changes.
Ever consider "diff" and "patch"? Seriously....
The performance of VNC over even "normal" broadband connections can be abysmal. NX runs rings around it for performance.
Make that Windows/Unix/Mac/Wii/Atari/Android/iPhone/Amiga/Anything that runs java/Palm/WinCE/C64/Etc./Etc./Etc...
I would love to see a better format for screen sharing, but if it doesn't work with everything, it will have a hard time replacing VNC.
Caveman!
I couldn't possibly get any work done without my 18 button mouse. Standard tasks are ridiculously inefficient on anything less.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I did it online once too, a few months ago. But last night I spent about 20 minutes searching the menus and searching for help, and I think they removed the function.
VNC opens a window that everything else goes in.
Running shit via "ssh -X [-Y]" makes anything I run integrate seamlessly into my environment.
Big difference, that.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and horrible machine-language interpretation. Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Grandparent is a whippersnapper.
twm + xterm work fine over X11-over-compressed-SSH on dialup PPP links on a 28.8 modem.
You'd think these people had never had to install their OS on a 9600bps serial link on an 80x25 screen with no cursor control.
*shakes fist*
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Right, I've used NX over a WAN link (albeit a very fast one) and it's able to handle non-intensive tasks like running Eclipse or general GNOME apps on a 2560x1600 display with reasonable performance. You can forget trying to do much of anything at that resolution with VNC over a WAN.
That said, NX totally dies if you try to do anything with animation or video. Protocols like PCoIP or HP RGS do a lot better here since they compress more.
I've never seen NX perform as well as VNC - espescially Turbo/Tiger VNC with VirtualGL.
If you're doing remote 3D/scientific visualization, Turbo/Tiger VNC and VirtualGL is far and away better than NX. I've gotten 20 fps for 1280x1024 3D graphics -- over a 2 Mbit connection. VirtualGL/TurboVNC can also handle clusters of GPU's (ie. many nodes, each rendering part of an extremely complex image). The final screen buffer is then tunneled over SSH. It's amazing, frankly, to have some-odd 16 or so GPU's rendering a hellaciously complex 3D scene, and then it gets sent over a tiny pipe using TurboVNC & VirtualGL, and is then displayed on a netbook with very usable frame rates.
I didn't believe it was possible until I tried it myself. Recall you can stream a movie at close to DVD quality at 2 MBit; so I guess it's not that unbelieveable after all.
NX, in comparison, couldn't even start glxgears.
you don't need any special ports open, just SSH
SSH is all you need for anything. It's port forwarding and tunneling capabilities can be used for anything that uses TCP/IP - NFS, VNC, Samba, HTTP, video games - anything.
NX does the same thing - it uses SSH port forwarding & tunneling; it just handles it transparently for the user.
This is hardly unique to NX, as many VNC implementations also uses SSH transparently for the user.
And it's been pointed out - there isn't a major platform that VNC doesn't support.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The problem simply is X itself, the protocol is in a serious need for an overhaul, maybe now that things are moving towards wayland and push the X protocol on top of the rendering stack than being the base of everything as huge big X server blob will get things moving. Making Cairo remote seems like a sane choice and has been done as websocket demonstration already.
There is one crucial difference - it's a hell of a lot faster than X over SSH.
Ouch. Getting your password transferred to & used at arbitrary locations is hardly more secure than the challenge/response PK schema in which your secrets never leave your computer.
IMO the reasons behind this are merely laziness/incompetence on top of bad design.
I am not. First of all it is un-secure to enter your password somewhere without really having control of where it goes.
Second, it is a pain in the ass. Even if you use PK for all your ssh access you will have to maintain a password just for nx sake. Come on in the year 2010 (or 2011 for that matter) it is totally idiotic to use ssh with passwords for normal daily jobs.
That's why NX made its way out of my door very shortly after trying it out.
If you want to know the whole story then read on.
What really happens with NX is that your client first opens a ssh session to nx@server - this session uses PK auth. Unfortunately the private key is well known, as it ships with a default one and almost noone bothers with replacing it (in fact it is not advised - lol). That means anyone in the world can open that connection to your server and get authenticated and proceed to step 2.
Coming to step 2 after logging to your server as user nx the nx server program is launched. This program actually manages translating the X window protocol to the nx protocol - all the "compression" and stuff. It will set up a DISPLAY variable to point to itself and then launches ANOTHER ssh to you@localhost (localhost being the server). That's where your password comes in.
After that X applications (usually the whole desktop) can be launched under your account, they are going to talk to the sshd spawned by ssh @localhost, where the X protocol is encrypted and compressed, shortly afterwards decompressed and decrypted by the nx server running the ssh command, then translated to nx protocol, encrypted and compressed again through the ssh session for user nx all the way to your client pc where finally decrypted, decompressed, translated to X and displayed on your screen.
As you can see the weird part here is the user nx running the nx server. It is technically absolutely possible to avoid at all this step. The nx server could be easily launched on behalf of the user with the applications spawned from there. IIRC the introduction of the nx account is something as ill as licensing.
Even with the nx account present it is totally irresponsible to leave it protected by well known PK, for the sake of making the installation & deployment 2 clicks easier. The impact is that anyone can launch a nx server on your server. They claim it is secure - hah. At the very least you can start brute forcing passwords for local users, at the other extreme you can find a neat hole to hijack the process and make your way in to the system. Combine with the knowledge of some kernel loophole and you can start scanning for nx enabled systems all over the internet with satisfaction guaranteed.
And even with the ssh@localhost weirdness it is feasible to use PK auth, either by use of ssh agent or some sort of channel forwarding. But no, that's not supported, because...
... enter the customized ssh client shipped with nx which one of the steps involves. Being customized it is never kept up to date so say goodbye to features and say welcome another lot of security holes.
And finally when I read the forums about the open source client wondering if all this mess was fixed at last, I found out that it wasn't/won't - for COMPATIBILITY reasons.
Sad story.
[citation needed]
Linus : "I'm an egotistical bastard"
Imagining Linus actually admitting that something was better than something he wrote is hard. git soundly beats BitKeeper in terms of performance ; BK was managing a kernel patch merge in 6 seconds at a time that git was managing 6 patches per second. Squishy-feeling UI considerations don't sound like Linus' bag, and he wrote git specifically to cater to his needs, so I'm struggling to grasp what he would consider "better" about BitKeeper over git.
He thought BitKeeper was better than all the other VCS systems at the time he started git, that I will concede.
Use sshfs to mount your remote machine's disk and then run meld locally. No remote access protocol will be faster than that.
I've gotten 20 fps for 1280x1024 3D graphics -- over a 2 Mbit connection.
On the other hand for usable browsing and general desktop sessions NX doesn't need close to 2Mbit, it works well for me at 56kbit. So it's horses for courses, I guess.
It's not the VNC protocol that gives you your good 3D performance, it's the architecture of VirtualGL. I don't think there's a good reason VirtualGL couldn't be made to work with NX as well as VNC.
The future probably belongs to SPICE, which redhat (a company who do know how to develop open source code) are creating for remote access to virtualised systems.
Just put the mouse electronics on the bottom of a keyboard and enjoy your new 102-button two-handed mouse.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It can! NX can integrate remote windows into your local environment in the same way that an app launched via 'ssh -X' does, rather than a full remote desktop via (like a VNC session).
Bring up the configuration window. Under the 'Desktop' settings, rather than choosing KDE, GNOME, XDM, etc, click 'Settings' and select the "Floating windows" radio option rather than "New virtual desktop".
Launch a new session (you can't resume your old one and have this setting apply itself), and you have smoothly integrated remote application windows into your local environment.
Also this:
And if you follow the link on "contact XBox Support," the only way listed is to call.
I'm surprised anybody would bother to start making insults without bothering to simply supply a link. (Then again we are talking XBox Live here. There would be more incentive for normal people to stick around if there were an easy way to segregate all the morons such as yourself into your own little playpen).