> On 13/09/2011 11:25 AM, Warp wrote:
>> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Now I haven't tried it, but I'm told is approximately /impossible/ to
>>> actually configure X so that you can access it remotely. Even though
>>> that's its entire design goal.
>>
>> I don't know what you mean.
>>
>> For the sake of it, I just now tried to do a "ssh -X" to a friend's
>> computer
>> (who is also running linux) and ran xclock. It opened nicely on my
>> screen,
>> even though the program itself is running on my friend's computer
>> (which is
>> physically located something like 200 km from here).
>
> Like I said, I haven't personally tried to run X remotely. (I wouldn't
> know how.)

Google X-Windows HOWTO.

It's almost like people have sorted this out 20 years ago.

> I'm told it requires spending hours editing the X
> configuration files to set up authentication and so forth,

So, basically, your only gripe with UNIx is that userIDs are important, 
whereas a standard Windows home edition assumes everything is honky dory 
with Administrator.

> and then to make sure the server is started,

And you don't need to do do that on Windows?  Try remote logging on a 
server that had Terminal Services disabled, or crashed, since it's one 
of the few services that can not be remote-restarted by pstools.

> and then to tell the application you
> want to run to open on the remote machine rather than the local one (by
> using CLI options that vary for every individual program so you have to
> look them up), and then...

Add

export DISPLAY=my.pcs.ip.address:screenno

To your login script and then EVERY X program will run on your screen, 
not the remote machine's.  Where did you get the idea that the CLI 
argument would differ from one program to the next, if you've obviously 
haven't RTMFed?

> And that's without encryption. If you want encryption, now you have to
> also install and configure an ssh server and client, set up
> authentication and encryption keys and god-knows what else.

Installing an ssh server on your *NIX machine is relatively easy. 
Probably easier than making the required regisrty hacks to install 
Terminal Services on a Windows XP home edition.

Installing an ssh client on the other end is trivial.

>
> So you're seriously telling me that with a default Linux install, not
> only is an ssh server installed, but it's actually configured to allow
> incoming connections and service them? And that X will actually work in
> this configuration?

Depending on the distribution, yes.  Distros aimed at desktop users 
(Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc...) will usually not have these on by default, but 
"server" distributions (SLES, Red Hat, Etc...) will have them on by 
default, or as I mentioned in another post, will ask you at installation 
time.

This is exactly the same for Windows.  Compare the options and default 
settings between a Home edition, Profesionnal edition or the Advanced 
server  versions.

>
> I know nothing about X, but I do remember setting up my old laptop to be
> an ssh server so I could RDP into my Windows box over the Internet. It
> was a hellish nightmare of wading through manpages finding out how the
> hell to do what I actually wanted to do...



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