On 3/6/07, Damien DeZurik <ddezurik at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dan,
>
> I have used what is called NX to serve my desktop around my house and to my office (off site).  I haven't run it for maybe 8 months now, but last I used it, it worked really well.  The idea was, and probably still is, you get the free client from these German fellows: http://freenx.berlios.de/download.php.  And the server, you get from NOMachine: http://www.nomachine.com/select-package.php?os=linux&id=1.  And between the two, you have a free, lightweight server of desktop and it, in my experience, is far from bloated.   Since I haven't used it in a number of months, you may want to pull up NX, nomachine, or free nx in your favorite search engine. It's worth a look.
>
> Damien
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: John Reese <jwreese0 at comcast.net>
> To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> Sent: Monday, March 5, 2007 8:05:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Terminal server in Linux?
>
> Interesting topic.
>
> Check out the Skolelinux project. There's a write-up at the Free
> Software -Europe site:
>
> http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/education/tgs/tagatschool8.en.html
>
> Notes on Skolelinux I stole from a different site:
> Description: Skolelinux is the Debian-edu project's Custom Debian
> Distribution (CDD) in development. It is aiming to provide an
> out-of-the-box localised environment tailored for schools and
> universities. The out-of-the-box environment comes with 75 applications
> aimed at schools, as well as 15 network services pre-configured for a
> school environment. The simple, three-question installation requires
> minimal technical knowledge. Skolelinux is Debian, which means, among
> other things, that there are no license costs or worries, and that
> upgrade and maintenance of the software can be done over the Internet
> with the power of Debian's apt-get. The core goals of Skolelinux are
> localisation and ease of system administration.
>
>
> Not technical enough? Check out the FreeNX -> Nomachine project. Looks
> way cool. This is pretty exciting stuff
> .
> FreeNX write-up:
> http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/02/09/freenx.html?CMP=OTC-0O724Z062301&ATT=Powerful+Remote+X+Displays+with+
>
> Nomachine:
> http://www.nomachine.com/
>
> John Reese
>


I will preface the following by saying that I didn't do any real
testing and this was running on a Xen based workstation.

I have been using TightVNC for many years, running it as an xinetd
service to allow people to use our workstations remotely. I also use
it the same way at home.

I tried NoMachine and FreeNX recently and after trying it several
times I found the performance to be slightly worse than TightVNC. Some
things were faster such as menus popping up, but overall the
performance was worse. It could really be felt when switching windows.
The overall quality was pretty good, but I wasn't very impressed.

I don't have any real performance numbers to provide... just the feel
of things. Either solution will do a fine job, it may just come down
to what you prefer using. The one thing that looked like it could be
promising is the bundling of the SSH tunneling and the remote desktop
connectoin that the NoMachine client provides.

Eric