Are you still using VNC to log into your remote Linux box to display X back to your MS Windows box.
Do you find it slow and annoying having a Linux Desktop always displayed.

Well a simple trick is to use a secure shell to log into the linux box, but also let that link send back X11 information to a local X-windows server. This is done by using the ‘ ssh -X ‘ command and then just running the apps that you want to see locally on your MS Windows PC.

This by itself is something I find really well implemented and very cool.

Now how to do this this in Windows?

First you need two applications;

Xming – Location

Putty – Location

Install Xming and run it (X will appear in your systray), this app makes it possible for any system to display X windows back to your system.

Now start putty, enter the hostname of the remote Linux host and in the connection options select Enable X11 forwarding (find this option on the left under > Connection -> SSH -> X11) You can save this session with this option for later use.

Initiate the connection with putty using the Open button, log in on the server

Now you have the command prompt of the remote server and will be able to launch X applications on your local Windows workstation, for example try (if you have GNOME installed).

gedit &

Some tools will only run if you have root (or sudo) rights, like yast2.

You also don’t need X running on the remote Linux side either, so this is also ideal when the Linux machine itself is in runlevel 3 (no GUI).