X is a windowing system that can present a number of different appearances to the user. The course Library page has tips on what X servers and SSH programs are recommended, particularly for Windows PCs, and how to get them. You may also need software to launch the remote application. This assumes, of course, that you have X server software installed on your local PC (or are carrying a portable X server on a flash drive). Launch an X client application, probably on a remote machine. The client program might be running on your local machine (e.g., if your local machine runs Linux or OS/X) or on a remote machine somewhere on the Internet, such as one of our Dept. The other is an X client, which is simply an application program that was compiled to work with X. The server must run on the machine at which you are seated - its job is to actually draw things on your display and handle mouse and keyboard inputs. One is an X server, the program that is responsible for controlling the display of your local machine. To use X, you need to run two different programs. With X you can transmit an entire desktop if you wish, but for remote access you have the option of transmitting an application’s windows separately and having them look and behave like windows on your local machine’s operating system. And, because you have to transmit an entire desktop worth of graphics, this can be slow and unresponsive if your network connection isn’t up to it. But that gives you a separate “box” on your screen that often “feels” very unlike the local applications you might be running on your own machine. Now, you can do remote access with Windows as well (“remote desktop”). That means that, even if you are not seated at a Unix or Linux system, you can run programs on a remote Unix/Linux machine and you can see and interact with programs that are running on some other, remote machine somewhere else on the network. The reason that X is of interest in this course is that X was designed, from its beginnings, for remote use. Most of the time, you are less interested in Windows than in the programs that you are running under it. If you were seated at a Unix or Linux system, you would treat X much the same as you normally treat Microsoft Windows on most PCs - it’s there, it lets you launch your programs, and it makes things look pretty. X also allows the display of graphics and of a variety of fonts. For example, you can be reading electronic mail in one window while a lengthy compilation is running in another. By running X, you can have several windows on the screen open at once, each devoted to a different task.

How to use xming