February 16th 2006 09:08 pm
Xming + Xlaunch
Xming is a tiny (<13MB with all the optional components), free implementation of an X server for Windows, many times smaller than an alternative, Cygwin, my install of which is currently 344MB.
Until recently, Xming has been hard to use.. prompting someone to write Xlaunch; a wizard-like tool to make Xming work. Previous builds of it have had really stupid bugs (like, for instance, limiting the length of the machine name you were connecting to to 8 characters), but the latest version is better.
It’s bundled with Xming, so all you have to do is download and install Xming, and run Xlaunch.. irritatingly, the 20060209 release didn’t create a shortcut to Xlaunch, only Xming, you have to find and run it manually. It’ll probably be at c:\Program Files\xming\Xlaunch.exe.
Simplest way to get it working: Multiple Windows, next. Start a program, next. Start program: xterm, Using putty. Here you need to fill in the machine you want to connect to, your username and password (unless you have ssh keys setup). Ignore the next screen, just hit next.
The next screen prompts you to ‘Save configuration’ which sensibly (yet irritatingly) doesn’t save the password. This is ideal if you have ssh keys setup properly, but less so if you don’t. It’d be fine if Xlaunch would prompt you for the password when running .xlaunch files, but it doesn’t. So, if you don’t have sshkeys, just click finish.
In theory, you’ll get an xterm, running from the remote machine. If somehting goes wrong, you’ll get nothing (no error, no warning, etc.), and you have to guess what went wrong, good luck.
If it does work, it’s far faster and much more secure than vnc, and it doesn’t kill the remote machine anywhere near as much, and the “multiple windows” feature makes it far more useful.
7 Comments »
Colin Harrison on 23 Feb 2006 at 6:43 pm #
Hi,
Thanks, I’m about to release a new version of Xming with the…
XLaunch desktop shortcut provided in the installer
Password entry field, not stored, but with a warning on reuse if a password had been origionally entered.
Colin Harrison
Faux on 28 Feb 2006 at 7:17 pm #
Great work, keep it up
Chris on 24 Mar 2006 at 4:12 pm #
I love Xming, however I seem unable to open up the security to allow machines (unix) without ssh to launch xterms onto Xming. If this was a unix box I would use xhost +otherbox. Is there an equivalent for Xming ?
Colin Harrison on 21 Apr 2006 at 6:00 pm #
A port of xhost to Microsoft Windows is now available for Xming
Judebert on 02 Jun 2006 at 11:32 pm #
I’m *trying* to use Xlaunch, but I can’t get it to execute the remote client, no matter what I do. I’m using plink, and I’ve tried multiple windows and single window.
When I log in with PuTTY, the same command starts an xterm, as expected. I even launched XFCE4, just to see it work. It just won’t start automatically from Xlaunch.
sims on 16 Dec 2008 at 12:42 am #
This page ranked #1 on Google when I searched for Xlaunch ssh port.
I thought I’d leave a comment saying that Xlaunch is pretty much perfect now. Perhaps I should say complete. It allows to enter a password if none was entered or none was saved. I has a field where you can enter ssh or plink parameters, -P being for port. This is very useful when connecting to a NATed machine behind a FW on some obscure port.
Good work Mr. Harison! This makes Windows “thin clients” a breeze.
Daniel on 13 Sep 2010 at 12:26 am #
Hi, anybody of you guys knows how to avoid closing the remote app when clicking the “close button”, what i mean i want to leave the program running on server and the when i came back just open it again on my pc.