I’ve been very interested in the series Linux Journal has been running on NX. They describe it as: “a new technology that allows one to run remote X11 sessions across slow or low-bandwidth network connections. User experience with NX is one of excellent responsiveness. Users with previous remote X11 session experience are stunned by NX’s speed and its snappy application interaction. Moreover, NX also can connect to remote RDP and VNC sessions and offer big performance wins over TightVNC and rdesktop remote access. NX can do all of this from Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows workstations as well as from some types of PDA gadgets.”
So far, parts one, two, three and four of the seven part series are online.
NX seems like very slick technology – coming very close to the promise of any application on any device anywhere at anytime.
As is becoming more commonplace, there is an open-source version, FreeNX, and the commercial version, nomachine’s NX server/client. The 1-2 CPU version of the unlimited client enterprise edition server is only ~$300 with educational pricing ($600 list), so it’s not exactly a budget breaker.
There is currently server support for Linux and Solaris, with client support including: Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS X, and PlayStation2.
It’s worth checking out – I’m brewing up a few ideas on how this could be implemented on my network.