hmm, a windows X11 client, such as Exceed will allow you to use graphical apps on a linux/unix server, provided you login first with a shell that forwards x11 data -- ssh does it, so does login, rlogin, telnet and rsh. Telnet is not so good, but you may want to check out VNC, its fairly secure for your purposes, and will free you from all the layers i described.
cheers, ids
