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On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 09:00 -0400, Jeff Lightner wrote:
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<FONT SIZE="2">Can anyone tell me what open source X-Windows package(s) you use to display X-Windows on your MS-Windows desktops/laptops?</FONT><BR>
<FONT SIZE="2">In most of my jobs I’ve used Hummingbird Exceed ($$$) and it works great.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE="2">Previously we installed Xming (a subset of the Cygwin stuff) but I never really used it to a great extent. The powers that be got wind of Cygwin from someone else and now think they want to replace Exceed with it. However, my coworker had told me there were some things he’d seen issues with Xming (though I never saw them). Does anyone have experience using Cygwin/Xming to display commercial UNIX (HP-UX, AIX, Solaris) and Linux X-Windows? If so do you know of any gotchas such as rendering problems with specific X apps?</FONT><BR>
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I've used Xming and the X server that comes with Cygwin to display applications from HP-UX and Solaris boxes without trouble in the past. This was on an old network that didn't use SSH (rather, telnet everywhere and remote application display using DISPLAY=IP:0.0 on the remote, combined with xhost access control on the local machine). I've never had a problem. The application that I probably used the most in this manner was HP's OpenView; it worked just fine.<BR>
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I <I>did</I> wind up setting things up on an Ubuntu box at that job, though, but only because Windows refused to push the graphics hardware to its limit, resolution-wise, and I wanted to see much more of OpenView on the monitor than Windows would let me. IIRC, Windows would only go up to 1024x768 on the box, while Ubuntu would let me go all the way up to 19??x16??. I much preferred the latter resolution. :) In any event, both worked just fine in comparison with Hummingbird's eXceed, though you'll have to set up shortcuts and/or batch files yourself.<BR>
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<FONT SIZE="2">Does anyone have any other FOSS X-Windows package suggestion for MS-Windws?</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE="2">Also as I recall there is another commercial X-Windows package but its name escapes me. If anyone is using that and has opinions of it as compared to Exceed or Cygwin/Xming I’d be interested in hearing it.</FONT><BR>
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It seems that the latest Xming (X11R7.5) is licensed differently; the site says the access is for private individuals, and that a license is required for commercial use of the latest releases; releases from SourceForge are public domain, though and can still be used in a commercial environment. For most uses, I'd suspect that you don't need X11R7.5 and that a release of X11R6.9 (available on <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/files/">Sourceforge</A>) will do just fine. If any of that is a problem, I'd recommend Cygwin, but Cygwin overall is slower due to the POSIX compatibility emulation combined with the expense of process creation on Windows (and is probably overkill if all you need is an X11 display).<BR>
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— Mike<BR>
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Blog: <A HREF="http://mike.trausch.us/blog/">http://mike.trausch.us/blog/</A>
Misc. Software: <A HREF="http://mike.trausch.us/software/">http://mike.trausch.us/software/</A>
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