Nothing stops you from running your window manager and all over X forwarding. Once you launch the window manager remotely, the forwarding becomes pretty transparent. The menus will launch remote software and the xterms they launch will be remote. I'm sure someone has a slick way of doing the initial window manager launch.
The font problems with mathematica are resolvable. I used to run mathematica off of glue displaying on my dorm room linux box all the time. You need to set up font forwarding. In theory, any program X forwarded could have font issues if the two computers have different fonts installed. VNC has other advantages. It will let you log out and reconnect later without losing what you were doing. On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Nick Cummings<[email protected]> wrote: > That's a fine solution for running individual programs on a remote machine > (except for some software, like Mathematica, that has issues with X > forwarding, fonts, window redrawing, etc.), but it's a bit of a pain if you > basically want to run all software remotely. That why I was looking for a > solution that's almost a thin client. > > Someone else suggested I might try FreeNX. Apparently it's VNC-type > software that works via SSH by default, so that sounds like maybe it's what > I want. > > Nick > > On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Justin Walker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Using X-forwarding, all of the actual computation occurs on the remote >> side, it just displays to the local machine rather than to the remote >> machine's monitor. I suspect that's your best bet. Plus, it uses an SSH >> tunnel, so it's relatively secure. Depending on how display-heavy the >> computations you're doing are, you may bandwidth saturate, though. >> >> - Justin >> >> Nick Cummings wrote: >>> >>> Like I said, they're both on the same 100 Mbps LAN (actually 1 Gbps LAN, >>> but the old machine only has a 10/100 NIC). I would be willing to try both, >>> but I guess I was curious if a) there were other suggestions, or b) there >>> was any sage advice about doing things securely (e.g., using SSH port >>> forwarding). >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Rob Sherwood <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> How remote is the remote machine? LAN? WAN? It's not too hard just >>> to try both and see what works best. X should work out of the box for >>> you but I suspect your will like VNC better. What I would be >>> interested in hearing is if there are any other alternatives? >>> >>> - Rob >>> . >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Nick Cummings<[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> > I have a slow old machine (Celeron 400 MHz) that I'd like to use >>> as a client >>> > to do work on a faster remote machine. What I want is almost a >>> thin client, >>> > meaning that most of the time I'd like as much as possible >>> running on the >>> > faster server, but the client will have a hard drive, and >>> ideally I'd like >>> > to retain the ability to login to the local system occasionally. >>> Also, I >>> > don't have a special NIC I can boot from in the client. >>> > >>> > What are my best options? >>> > >>> > Currently, the server is running Ubuntu Hardy (8.04 LTS) and the >>> client is >>> > running Xubuntu Jaunty (9.04). The two machines are on the same >>> 100 Mbps >>> > LAN. Both have public (i.e., routable) IP addresses and are not >>> behind a >>> > firewall, so I don't want to open anything terribly insecure. >>> > >>> > I'm familiar with X Forwarding, which would allow me to connect >>> via SSH and >>> > have individual applications on the remote machine forwarded to >>> the local >>> > machine's X server. But since I'd be working essentially >>> entirely on the >>> > remote machine, it would be preferable to be using an entirely >>> remote >>> > desktop. Also, the more computational work that can be >>> off-loaded onto the >>> > remote machine the better. >>> > >>> > Should I look into some sort of VNC software or XDMCP? Which of >>> these is >>> > relatively secure (or can be easily made secure with the use of SSH >>> > tunnels)? I would also like something that doesn't require me to >>> already be >>> > logged in on the remote machine. >>> > >>> > Thanks, >>> > >>> > Nick >>> > >>> >>> > >
