Ask Slashdot: Open Source Remote Application Access?

First time accepted submitter taikedz writes "Citrix Xenapp with Receiver/Metaframe allows publishing individual applications installed on a Windows server to users on remote machines. These applications open in their own windows, along side others as if they were installed locally. I am looking to do the same at home, with free software, publishing applications from Mac, Linux, and Windows machines (and yes, I've verified the license agreements for the apps I am going to do this with!). Up until now, the only alternatives I have found are full-on remote desktop login, not seamlessly-integrated. Can you recommend any tools that can achieve the goal of remote individual application access across platforms for free or at low-cost?"

Comments

X forwarding

[Hatta]

This has been a feature of X since before X11. It's even easier to use now with SSH supporting X forwarding. And if you're using it across the public internet, you can get good performance with FreeNX.

Unfortunately, this is all likely to go away if X is deprecated in favor of Wayland.

Re:X forwarding

[Deltaspectre]

I must be doing something wrong or GUI toolkits these days aren't designed as well for X forwarding, but anything slower than a LAN connection (and even then!) and it's painful to watch the screen update. My last attempt was last semester using Matlab off of my college's Unix servers so I wouldn't need to buy my own copy for homework and it didn't take long for me to pony up the $100.