FreeNX:Remote display

NX is an exciting new technology for remote display. It provides near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links. The core libraries for NX are provided by NoMachine under the GPL. FreeNX is a GPL implementation of the NX Server and NX Client Components.

NX Distributed Computing Architecture is a suite of technologies and commercial tools, designed to make network computing as easy and widespread as browsing the web. It consists of a thin layer of server software that enables any Unix computer to work as a terminal server. Clients are also available for a wide range of platforms and operating systems. NoMachine has chosen to build the foundations of its NX Distributed Computing Architecture on the well known and widely used X-Window System – the windowing system that’s behind the Graphical User Interfaces of Linux and the Unix Operating System.

Most network computing solutions seem to be designed to work as surrogate tools. It appears that the architects behind their design did not intend them to be the primary means by which users access their desktops. This is the problem, for example, with VNC and RDP. Both these protocols are much simpler than X (and so very well suited for thin clients), but their simplicity does not compensate for their lack of efficiency and functions. These protocols, for example, draw the remote screen by transferring huge amounts of image data over the network. Even if RDP is of a much higher level and a much more efficient protocol than RFB, it has not been designed for everyday use of computing resources, but as an add-on to the underlying operating system.

X-Window is the graphical subsystem ,and not an extension, of the host OS’s subsystem. X applications communicate with X-Window using the X protocol, so that the operating system does not have to add a layer to translate screen updates into a network protocol.

Website: http://freenx.berlios.de/