NoMachine

Attn: Linux Geeks!

Call me old school, but I've always preferred tunneling my X connection via ssh, rather than running a virtual desktop program. But, tunneling X progs over ssh through that too damned tiny broadband up pipe can just take too long.

The solution: NoMachine. It will allow you to run X progs through an ssh connection and all the encryption therein, but uses client side caching to alleviate a lot of the traffic overheard, making it perfect for low bandwidth connections. You can use it either to just run a specific app, or with a full fledged desktop. And it can use the desktop manager of your choice, so XFCE fans such as myself, don't have to get stuck with Gnome or KDE.

Setup and install was a breeze on Gentoo, with one exception. NoMachine uses it's own set of pubkey's for authentication, so you have to make sure you get the right keys copied to the right places. The one thing I did, which wasn't in any HOWTO was to copy /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key from my server to /usr/NX/share/ on my client. That got it working with no problems.

Thanks go to Bobby Busch for showing NoMachine to me.