> There are now many ways to run applications on a > variety of platforms, > including Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86, Linux, and > Windows. We have all > of these available with the same home directories. > What do people use > o run applications on a different platform from a > Solaris desktop in > a transparent manner? By this I mean that selecting > an item on a menu > is all that should be required. Switching desktops > or logging in to a > different system doesn't count.
Assuming you mean graphical apps, for remote systems running Solaris (any), Linux, *BSD, or most Unix-like OSs generally (except Mac OS X, but see below), they probably use X, which is inherently capable of remote display. If the remote system also runs sshd, it's as simple as having a menu entry that runs something like ssh -X remotehost remotecommand (assuming account names are the same locally and remotely) No idea what if any window/desktop managers make adding that sort of menu entry a total no-brainer. However, old "ugly/obsolete" CDE did certainly make provision for relatively* easy definition of actions that ran remotely, assuming of course that both systems had CDE installed and compatible action definitions set up. * by which I mean that a remote action was about as easy to set up as a local one, not that everyone would think either to be easy. I do, but then I like CDE, have written programs specifically for it, and have used it since it came out. Mac OS X (which you didn't specifically mention) _can_ have X apps, but native Mac apps don't use X. VNC can display back entire sessions, but probably not single apps. Same applies to Windows; native clients don't use X; VNC can only display back entire sessions AFAIK. Unless specifically licensed for more, Windows will only allow one graphical login session at a time (not sure whether that's also true for Mac OS X). Citrix is another alternative, but not free (at least on the side where the application runs, although the viewer might be); and I think it would also display back only entire sessions. But I think it can handle sound as well as graphics. Perhaps "Sun Secure Global Desktop" can fill in some of the gaps (as well as cover most of the other cases, give or take remote display of a Mac OS X app), but AFAIK it's not free (although a limited-time demo license is). On Solaris x86/x64, one might be able to run Windows apps locally under wine, but not all will work, and AFAIK wine isn't bundled with Solaris x86, although one might be able to find pre-built binaries somewhere. In principle Solaris should be able to do pretty much anything Linux can in this regard. No doubt I forgot something. But AFAIK, there's no one free solution that works everywhere, nor even a combination of free solutions that allow reasonably transparent remote execution of individual native graphical apps on all the platforms. Non-graphical apps are another story; if the remote system runs sshd, they should be no problem, and sshd can be had for all the platforms. This message posted from opensolaris.org
