An X-Client Wrapper for Microsoft Windows? 62
S asks: "In my opinion, one of X11's most underrated features is the ability
to export the display of an [X] application to an X-Server that can be physically separated from the application's host (use a remote display). I have used this countless times to dramatically increase my ability to 'get stuff done' from a distance. Recently I discovered Cygwin's ability to run XFree86 in rootless mode (startx -- -rootless) where there is no main X root window, and imported displays get their own 'native-looking' window on the Microsoft Windows platform. This also has saved me much headache when working from a Windows machine to do Linux-type things. My question is: Is there some way to export the display of Microsoft Windows windows to a remote X-Server? I'm not talking VNC/RFB here, and terminal services (via rdesktop) ALMOST fits the bill, but I don't want a root window. I want to simply export the display of (say... photoshop) to my X workstation. Googling is not an easy task; 'windows' is too much of a generic term to get usable results. What I have found, however, suggests
Wine as a buffer between native Windows GUI calls and the X protocol, but offers no actual solution. Does anyone know of software that allows allows Windows to export the display of
its windows to an X server (ie, an X-Client wrapper for Windows)?"
Not really helpful... (Score:5, Informative)
My comment isn't really helpful, but I wanted to chip in with a clarification. Rootless mode is not a feature of Cygwin, but XFree86 itself. It is of primary use for MacOS X users who want to run X apps [locally or not]. It is also useful for running a second X server on top of another, though the applications of that are particular.
Re:Not really helpful... (Score:2, Informative)
Well actually (Score:1)
Citrix (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Citrix (Score:5, Informative)
Disclamer: I am a CCEA and CCI working for a citrix implementer (http://www.vector.com) but it is a blast!!!
Disclamer Disclamer: I just typed this whole message on my treo300 and I'm just starting to have an attack of "nintendo thumbs"
Re:Citrix (Score:2)
Combine with our two-factor authentication and running over https, there's enough security to satisfy a lot of the suits' concerns.
It's very weird to see Outlook '98 running as just another window on my Linux desktop!
Re:Citrix (Score:2)
A question on the pricing, I guess you still have to buy client licences for Win2K Server in addition to the Citrix costs?
It certainly helps with the management of applications (you just deploy on the server). The price differentials now for clients means that you end up with 8 users killing the 1GHz server dead, whilst they have 1.6GHz systems on their desktops doing almost nothing.
Re:Citrix (Score:2, Insightful)
A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:1)
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:2)
I was expecting remote displays in the OS X public beta
but it's still not there. VNC fills the gap somewhat but
it's pretty slow. I think I head once that OS X can't do it
because of how they had to rework the display layer so
you couldn't grab stills from DVDs, which Apple had to
to to be license complient. Or maybe it's because they
are not using Display PostScript.
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:2, Informative)
But they're at 10.2 already and haven't yet included an X server with the distribution, I'm not hopeful for X client support any time soon.
Hopefully they get that new "optimized" X server into 10.3.
Ob-On Topic: Is there any free PC-Anywhere type project for Windows that intercepts GDI calls? That might be the best starting point.
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:1)
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:2)
Around the office we would use this feature to vamp off whoever happened to have the fastest machine at the time. Woe betide the lucky bastard with the 200MHz PPro! He would have 5 copies of EOModeler.app running.
Re:A good idea for Macs, too. (Score:2)
My favorite use of this feature was always the dual-mobo cube hack.
Ooooo! (Score:1)
We do something similar to this at work. (Score:2, Insightful)
The machines scattered around the store are widely varied and many of them are quite new, but all of them have the same software: Win95, and some Novell shit that looks more like a dieing gasp than a functional program.
The point? These machines suck, overall.
But that's not really the point, is it? No.
The scheduling software runs on a Win2k AS box somewhere in the store, and uses 8-bit RDP for local display. You just run the scheduling app like any other app, and a Win2k startup banner appears in the middle of the monitor, just like any other window... It runs quite fast once the session boots up.
RDP is, therefore, more flexible than the poster appears to give it credit for.
And the trick, therefore, is not some funky-ass, nonexistant X/Win32 translation suite, but just to use existing, native protocols, and one of the many free RDP clients available with X output.
Nevermind, of course, that licensing for Win2k AS is hideously expensive. You've all got an eye patch sitting around somewhere - if not, just "borrow" one from a friend.
Re:We do something similar to this at work. (Score:2)
S
Re:We do something similar to this at work. (Score:2)
A lot of us have an old windows machine laying around just to handle a special app for work (I VNC to one here just to do my timesheets every week). Getting a windows app to output onto my X Server would be the single most convenient addition to my system to date, and I don't feel like breaking the law to get it done, thank you very much.
Tightvnc: desktop sharing (Score:5, Informative)
Not yet possible, but XOpenWin wants to be this (Score:5, Informative)
There would be amazing advantages to doing it differently though - for more discussion on this see XOpenWin [redhat.com]
although nothing has yet been accomplished through this project. The key things to do which would make this possible are:
Re:Not yet possible, but XOpenWin wants to be this (Score:2)
Slight restatement (Score:5, Informative)
My only nits about either modes is that you still have a root X window (standard grey crosshatch) that's started minimized but otherwise sits in the process list and can sometimes make quick switching a bit more difficult without activating the wrong X app. I'd wish that the Cygwin X server could be started as a background service such that 1) it stays off the process list, and 2) to get an xterm to a remote computer up, I would simply have to ssh to that computer via putty or cygwin's ssh, point DISPLAY back , and let loose the X applications, as opposed to having to start the X server on Windows manually each time.
Re:Slight restatement (Score:4, Informative)
Just use "ssh -X -C remotemachine".
The -X flag will handle setting DISPLAY for you.
The -C compression flag is optional,
but usually speeds up remote X apps.
Re:Slight restatement (Score:1)
Can't check right now, though..
S
Re:Slight restatement (Score:2)
DESQview/X (Score:5, Interesting)
In ye good ol' DOS times, there was DESQview/X [cmu.edu], that allowed you to run Win 3.1 in a X-Window, and display it on any X-Server. It could also turn any 386 w/ DOS in a X-terminal.
Pretty cool stuff, but probably little market share. You can see screenshots here [passagen.se]. More info here [bgdf.com]. If you don't care for 95/2000/XP support, as it doesn't have it, you can download DESQview/X here [chsoft.com] (I didn't test it, though.
Re:DESQview/X (Score:3, Informative)
DV/X was way cool though. Even cooler than regular Desqview- and unlike Win3.1, at the same time, could actually mutlitask between a terminal window downloading something from a BBS and another DOS program.
Alkit VNC (Score:4, Informative)
I know you specifically said "not VNC/RFB", but Alkit VNC [alkit.se] may do what you want. It is a modified version of WinVNC that allows you to share a single window instead of the entire desktop.
I don't know what relationship (if any) it has to the modified version of TightVNC mentioned in another thread, but I've used it and it works.
Re:Alkit VNC (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for the reply.. that just might work (even though RFB's performance sucks)
The correct URL is: http://w2.alkit.se/avnc/ [alkit.se]
S
If anyone's interested in coding this... (Score:2, Informative)
http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/
Not quite. (Score:3, Informative)
nFuse must have the client installed in order for it to connect to the Citrix server. However, nFuse GREATLY simplifies the installation of the client. Code can be embedded in the nFuse web page to automatically download and install an Active X client plugin for IE and Win32 Netscape users, and links to the client install can be placed on the nFuse login page for those that cannot use the Active X plugin. It does negate the need for an administrator to manually install the client software on each client machine but, client software must still be installed, either via the plugin or the user clicking the link.
Citrix offers free client software for *ANY* platform including DOS, Win32 and Pocket PC, Mac, Linux, Java and more. nFuse is a very nice add-on to Citrix and it is free. Citrix however, ain't cheap.
Re:Not quite. (Score:1, Informative)
Cygwin WINE? (Score:2)
Use WINE compiled on win32 with the cygwin runtime to execute a windows app, but set WINE's display variable to the remote machine.
I built the mtools package once upon a time with cygwin to copy files into and out of a Bochs disk image file. But WINE would be way out there.
May be obvious, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course Wine doesn't run everything, but my experience is that if it does run something, it runs it stably. Try both wine and winex (the latter even if you aren't trying to run a game, I've had mixed experiences with both), and if it runs the app(s) you're looking to share, you're "done".
I know it's not perfect and I know it's not quite what you're looking for, but sometimes you have to take what you can get.
With Desqview/X you used to be able to that. (Score:3, Informative)
This is one of those times where "old" fxrts like me tell nostalgic war stories that begin with "You used to be able to do that...."
You used to able to do that with Desqview/X [slashdot.org] but Microsoft's "innovations" sidled it out of the market.
Now let me tell you about my what my late-1970s VCR could do that modern ones can't...
Re:With Desqview/X you used to be able to that. (Score:1)
Re:you used to be able to that. (Score:1)
It had a wired remote control that had a silver slider bar that would allow playback in any speed from 15x to 1/4x. It had a patented chip that made the sound intelligible at any of those speeds. In other words, when you played the program at 4 times normal, the sound stayed live and instead of hearing people talk like Mickey Mouse, they talked in their regular voices but 4 times faster. Some mini-tape recorders of that time got the same technology.
It had skip and rewind to mark where any time your made a new recording it would put a undetectable audio mark on the tape where you can skip forwards or backwards to the mark.
The whole thing was mechanical so when you pressed play or rewind cams and gears and belts would come into play with a sequence of clunk-clunks-clunkc to change modes by pushing up and down on the piano keys on the front.
It was one of the first VCRs with a remote control. I still have tapes I recorded in those days, like the original Lathe of Heaven from PBS and Walter Cronkite's last CBS Evening News.
Re:you used to be able to that. (Score:1)
Re:With Desqview/X you used to be able to that. (Score:2)
Flash 12:00 in brighter blue?
XWinX (Score:2, Informative)
I love this question and thread. (Score:1)
Xwin32 (Score:2)
Re:Xwin32 (Score:1)
he is looking to export the display of a windoze box. XWin32 does the contrary: it allows you to open apps running on a unix machine on your windows machine--another one of those is exceed [hummingbird.com], which can be used with the PuTTY ssh client for example.
The contrary is much trickier, and usually involves the use of windows terminal server, as outlined in posts above.
Re:Xwin32 (Score:2)
my bad...Sorry.
NCD WinCenter, AKA Citrix UIS (Score:2)
Perhaps you can find them in some abandonware site?
RDesktop (Score:1)
It is an RDP client that will connect to a Terminal Server and give you an windows desktop. You just need to type this from the command line.
rdesktop -s app.exe myserver.com
You can get rdesktop from http://www.rdesktop.org.
One of the best Windows/Linux Open Source utilities out there.
Joe MacDonald
Yes there is. But.... (Score:2)
You can have all the cool toys in the world but if you're passing info in clear text, why even bother with all this?
Citrix can do the job for numerous 'nix platforms.
You also might want to check out WRQ as they have been perfecting Excellent, Secure X Emulation products for many years.
Dolemite
re (Score:1)