FreeNX Terminal Server Setup on SUSE 10

TRussell writes to tell us that Mad Penguin recently had the opportunity to review SUSE 10 and found that they had included the latest version of FreeNX on their installation media. FreeNX is a relatively new technology for remote display providing "near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links." The article provides a nice guide on how to get it set up for several different operating systems.

Re:Application?

[the roAm]

*sigh* Don't post if you don't know what TFA is about. http://freenx.berlios.de/info.php [berlios.de]

Re:Application?

[Aranth Brainfire]

High latency = slow

HTH, HAND

Re:Application?

[jgoemat]

Or geosynchronous satellite internet, 600ms pings, but 3mbit

Re:Application?

[CableModemSniper]

Slow latency. I do not think that means what you think it means.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_(engine ering) [wikipedia.org]

Re:Application?

[sean1121]

Excuse my ignorance, but how many connections are "high latency, low bandwidth"

Dialup is high latency, low bandwidth.

Dialup? Slow latency.

I think your confused here. Latency is the time it takes for a packet to reach its destination. (And get back if talking round trip time) Bandwidth is how much data can be transmitted per second. See here [wikipedia.org]

Re:Application?

[Daxster]

Alright alright, cheers. I was thinking of high latency meaning..short travel times.

Speed

[Seraphim_72]

Is it just me or are the speed claims overblown by NX? I have run it between work and home and I really dont see any diff between VNC and NX. NX seems to need to totally refresh the screen like VNC does and what ever compresssion it uses seems to not give it any advantage. What are your thoughts?

Seraphim

Re:Speed

[golgotha007]

Ok, just ran a few quick tests:

Basically, there's a server on my local network that's routed via two different machines and going over a VPN (our WAN has about 2500 customers on it..). With VNC, it's not too bad. If I grab a window and yank it around the screen, there are some redraw issues and it basically looks like a slideshow.

So, I decided to give FreeNX a try.

I'm using FC4 on both client and server. I simply grabbed some RPMS (easy to follow instructions) here [madpenguin.org], loaded them up and I was off and running.

First impressions: wow! holy crap! I can now grab a window and yank it around the desktop with near fluid speed. Everything is highly responsive. I'm a big fan of VNC and have used it for many years now, but I think it's time to switch.

Keep in mind that this test was made over a low latent connection and with decent throughput.

Re:Speed

[golgotha007]

I don't normally respond to my own posts, but I provided an incorrect link for the installation instructions for Fedora.

Here are the Fedora instructions [fedoranews.org]

Re:Speed

[Zontar The Mindless]

I use VNC a lot on my LAN. I'm not too concerned about high-latency/low-bandwith, but it'll be good if it does better with cursors and high CPU usage than VNC seems to on some distros.

Re:Speed

[Sithgunner]

I have been following FreeNX for some time in my Gentoo but the good thing about FreeNX is not only I also feel it is more responsive than VNC, although I treat TightVNC server against RealVNC Windows client just as good, I think the built-in security measure is a big plus.

It goes through port 22, which is the proven SSH method and connects to user NX on the server, then redirect itself to it's X and pass it back, so no fancy new firewall hole or no need to put in your ssh forward or don't need to risk goin

Re:Speed

[paulatz]

Did you used ssh tunnelling or you opened the other required ports? I noticed that ssh is slitghly slower.

Setup?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just used "apt-get freenx" and it works like a charm. Why do you need all that setup?

Re:Setup?

[aliquis]

Didn't in ubuntu ;/, oh I should have taken freebsd anyway.

Connection from the server to the client.

[BokLM]

FreeNX is nice, however it seems to be missing a feature we have in VNC. With vnc you can run the viewer with the '-listen' option, then wait for the server to initiate the connection. With regular X remote display, you can do a 'xhost +hostname' (or something similar using xauth) and then receive a window from this host. I didn't find how to do that using FreeNX, the client has to initiate the connection. If anyone has any idea about how to do that, I'm interested ...