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X GUI Operating Systems Windows Unix Software

XLiveCD: Cygwin and X For Windows On A Live CD 313

Posted by timothy from the animated-plastic dept.
mallumax writes "OSnews is running a story on XliveCD which runs an X server (from X.org) from the CD using Cygwin. Also included are awk, sed, perl, vim, bash, grep, other text utilities, and most importantly an OpenSSH client. XliveCD is being developed by University Technology Services of Indiana University. Now you can carry Cygwin with you! I have been looking for something like this for a long time. Torrent link."
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XLiveCD: Cygwin and X For Windows On A Live CD More

XLiveCD: Cygwin and X For Windows On A Live CD

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  • Wait... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Doesn't running this on Windows defeat the purpose of it existing? Unix... On windows... Does not compute... Can't stop... ... ... Help...

    • Re:Wait... (Score:2, Informative)

      by garbletext ( 669861 )
      This is a live CD for X forwarding. The program runs on unix, and has it's graphics forwarded to the X client running on the remote windows machine

      • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ahg ( 134088 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:00AM (#11090790)
        I'm sorry if I appear to be to be knit-picking but...

        You have the client-server relationship wrong, a common mistake when talking about X windows.

        The application running on Unix is the client to the X-server running, in this case, off a Windows machines.

        Client examples: xterm, konqueror, Kmail, Evolution running on *nix

        Server: X.org running on _Windows_ via Cygwin

        • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)

          by steveha ( 103154 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:12AM (#11090822) Homepage
          I really, really wish the X guys hadn't used this terminology. But they did, so we need to keep it straight.

          Just think of it this way:

          A file server provides files to its clients. A print server provides printing to its clients. An X Window server provides graphical windows to its clients.

          Thus, when you run any X application, it is a client to the X Window server. It asks the server for a window to display stuff in.

          So, if you buy an expensive rack-mount server machine, and you hook up a thin client that lets you use a GUI, that thin client has an X server on it, and the X server talks to X clients that run on the server.

          The neat thing is that in the other universe (the one where Spock has a beard), they call "clients" "servers" and "servers" "clients", but the X guys still did it backwards there so this confusion still applies.

          Hope this helps.

          steveha
          • The terminology still doesn't make sense to me. The way I see it, the server should be the one running software and serving information about the windows that the client is about to draw on its screen.
            • The client isn't drawing anything on its screen; the client doesn't have a screen. The server does. And that server could be on the other side of the world to the client. I can run X applications on my office workstation and make them appear on my home PC over the internet. I really don't understand why people have such trouble with the client-server terminology in X. Having it the other way around would be like calling a print server the "client" simply because the server itself doesn't create the content.
              • A print server is called a server only because it is the central machine that houses drivers for individual printers, so the client doesn't have to. They serve printers and don't really provide any feedback to the user's machine; it's just a peer in this regard.
                • Which neglects the fact that printer drivers are INDEED stored at each end-user workstation.

                  Though they may be dynamically loaded at printer connect time, they are still there.
          • Doesn't make much sense the other way around, programs connect to the window manager, the window manager can't connect to programs.
        • You have the client-server relationship wrong, a common mistake when talking about X windows.

          You have the spelling wrong, a common mistake when talking about X Window.

          now please correct my grammar ;)

        • However, an X server behaves as client to an XDM server. :)

  • I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Phidoux ( 705500 )
    What is the point?

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @03:55AM (#11090777) Homepage Journal
      What is the point?
      Consider these ideas:
      • Take a CD to work and use X on any machine with a CD drive
      • Use this as a framework to add more applications like dev tools, auditing tools or desktop apps (probably forking the project, but interesting)
      • Use it to prove to the ill tempered that *Nix is not all bad and quite usable
      • Find a way to port it to Flash drives and such
      • Another valid use of BitTorrent :D (the download of this iso that is)
      Remember that this is an early version. The best uses are to come probably.

      • Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by evilviper ( 135110 )

        Take a CD to work and use X on any machine with a CD drive

        Yes, but use X to do WHAT exactly? Click on pretty buttons over and over again? If I can't have cygwin on disk, able to manipulate files, save scripts, etc, what's the use, really? The few Unix apps that are worth the trouble of running in an X11 window on a Windows box, already have native ports.

        Use this as a framework to add more applications

        Yeah, great, another framework... because we didn't have nearly enough already. Does getting Cygwin

        • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:31AM (#11090884) Homepage Journal
          It's a crufty layer on top of Windows
          Exactly! You don't have to RTFA to know that this means you don't have to even re-boot your machine to use it. This is an advantake to those of us on W32 boxen at work that are refused a *nix dev machine. If you think it sucks, don't use it. I happen to see some usefulness for me. To each their own.

        • Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Informative)

          by halivar ( 535827 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `reglefb'> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @08:41AM (#11091593)
          Yes, but use X to do WHAT exactly? Click on pretty buttons over and over again? If I can't have cygwin on disk, able to manipulate files, save scripts, etc, what's the use, really? The few Unix apps that are worth the trouble of running in an X11 window on a Windows box, already have native ports.

          The debugger that came with our version HP/UX server did not have a console interface; it was GUI only. That means we had to have X to log in an do any debugging work on our apps.

          I could have used something like this.

        • Take a CD to work and use X on any machine with a CD drive

          Yes, but use X to do WHAT exactly? Click on pretty buttons over and over again? If I can't have cygwin on disk, able to manipulate files, save scripts, etc, what's the use, really? The few Unix apps that are worth the trouble of running in an X11 window on a Windows box, already have native ports.

          We have some stand-alone test equipment such as an HP logic analyzer which can export their displays via X-Windows. It's much nicer using them this w

        • Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by giminy ( 94188 )
          Yes, but use X to do WHAT exactly? Click on pretty buttons over and over again? If I can't have cygwin on disk, able to manipulate files, save scripts, etc, what's the use, really? The few Unix apps that are worth the trouble of running in an X11 window on a Windows box, already have native ports.

          Native ports, yes, but does your desktop Windows machine compare to this?

          unix:$ sysinfo

          General Information

          Manufacturer is Sun (Sun Microsystems)
          System Model is Fire V440
          Main Memory is

      • Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Habahaba ( 824033 )
        This package is HUGE!

        Has anybody made a *samll* backage of the Cygwin/X? Putty + that should be very small and fit anywhere (like USB kaychain). Cygwin/X should not need much... I almost did it, but had problems with fonts that I could not solve.

      • Cygwin on CD. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Quantum Jim ( 610382 )

        Find a way to port it to Flash drives and such

        I already run Cygwin on a flash drive. Granted, I only run some BASH, CVS, Lynx, clisp, and some other text utilities. But it only takes up 69,884,685 bytes plus slack. Here's what I did:

        1. I'm installing on a computer with limited permissions (no install allowed). So I downloaded setup.exe from Cygwin.com [cygwin.com].
        2. Ran setup.exe. I told it to:
          • Install only for me (although I didn't install untill later).
          • Download only from the Internet to c:\temp\cygwin-setup\.

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnderScan ( 470605 ) <`jjp6893' `at' `netscape.net'> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:02AM (#11090797)
      > What is the point?
      The point is easy interoperability between *nix and Windows OSs. See my post at OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9163#313 438 [osnews.com] of it's ease of use.

      You can also find more info from from a paper published for the SIGUCCS of the ACM titled: Easy access to remote graphical UNIX applications for windows users [acm.org] Listed below is the publicly available abstract:
      ABSTRACT
      A barrier deters Windows users from evaluating graphical scientific software that runs only on remote UNIX systems. Graphical UNIX applications are based on X Windows. To make use of X applications, Windows users must install an X server, install communications software for connecting to remote UNIX systems, and configure their systems to display graphics from remote systems. This barrier can be removed by making use of an X server and communications software that run live from CD-ROM. This poster presents such a CD-ROM known as XLiveCD.

      XLiveCD appears to users as an application that provides a command-prompt that allows them to log in to remote computers. Windows XP/NT/ 2000 users insert the CD into a drive and click twice in response to a wizard. A terminal window appears on the screen and provides a command prompt. From the command prompt users run the secure shell (ssh) to connect to a remote computer and launch applications. X graphics windows are forwarded automatically.

      XLiveCD is based entirely on open source software and is available free for download. It is a Cygwin environment (from Red Hat, Inc.), including the X.org X server and openssh installed and modified to be run from CD-ROM. The home page is http://xlivecd.indiana.edu/.

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dario_moreno ( 263767 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:17AM (#11090838) Journal
      I see the point for portables computers with WiFi or GPRS Internet access, which can be a pain (or simply impossible) to setup under Linux. Imagine that you can borrow a laptop from time to time at work to go on the road, and cannot afford to take hours to install cygwin, but with this solution instead you can in seconds connect to your remote Unix server.

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoneyMan ( 234776 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:18AM (#11090843)
      The point is that you can sit at any windows machine, which may not necessarily be your own, and have a decent set of utilities to use.

      I personaly work on many machines on any given day. The majority of which I do not own. I'm not "allowed" by my customer to go and just start throwing applications onto their system willy-nilly.

      With this, I can work on any machine, using a shell I know, (bash), have a functional Xserver available, and access to a bajillion other GNU utilities without ever installing a single app.

      Ever needed to tail a file in windows? It's there. Yes, there is a tail app for windows, and it's free. The point here is that this doesn't need to be installed. Grep? same thing.

      Just boot to a LiveCD distro, you say? But I need to see what's happening on this Virii / Spyware ridden hunk o' junk while it's running windows.

      Could I build my own suite? Yeah... but why would I? This has what I need.

      Kudos and my thanks to the Cygwin team.
    • lots of companies monitor traffic on the standard ports and block web sites, but most lazy sys admins won't lock things down tight enough that you can't just ssh into your home box and do what ever you want, unmonitored no less :).

    • Well at least you won't sit on the point, then :-)

      For me, having a nice set of useful tools plus Perl THAT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE INSTALLED (i.e. need Administrator privileges).

      There are many things that I encounter in every day work environments which are fixed by a trivially short perl script (which are a monumental pain in the ass in VBScript or impossible with a batch file). I might not have the freedom of being able to install Perl, or bash or grep/sed/awk etc. on $RANDOM_PERSON's Windows system to fix a

  • The point? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Random Data ( 538955 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @03:53AM (#11090771)
    I was going to ask what the point was, given the number of Live CDs such as Knoppix, etc. Then I actually RTFA and they suggest it's for use in public access Windows boxes, where a reboot may not be available but running stuff from the CD is.

    I still suspect VNC on a USB key or CD might be easier, and the difference between forwarding X and using VNC isn't that much in my experience.

    • Re:The point? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Dr. Descartes ( 673148 )

      My experience has been that VNC is less bandwidth intensive which can be real handy if you're working in an environment without business/commercial connectivity. I've found myself in that situation a couple of times here in Alaska where bandwidth is kind of expensive.

      I imagine there's times when one would want their entire session encrypted beyond the authentication process and forwarding X is great for that. Many individuals are less security conscious and would probably have a better experience with V

      • Re:The point? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by iamacat ( 583406 )
        Are you kidding? I used to run xterm and Emacs over 2400 baud and it was tolerable, even before I tried lbxproxy. On the other hand, TightVNC is not usable for serious work even over a cable modem. As I understand, VNC sends bitmaps while X11 forwards drawing calls and many things like images and fonts are cached on the server.

        Even if everything else was the same, VNC has to refresh the whole screen, while with X you can just open a couple of small windows from remote. How can it have a better performance?

        • Re:The point? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dr. Descartes ( 673148 )

          I guess it all depends on what you're using it for. If I have to forward X, it follows that the application I am using is either not my current host or is not available to be done from a vanilla SSH session. Instances of usage include using StarOffice, Mozilla, and even XMMS. There were very legitimate reasons for using each of these applications at the time (well, except XMMS). It is noted that VNC requires fewer roundtrips than X, hence high bandwidth applications appear faster when using VNC despite

        • Re:The point? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:06AM (#11090957)
          Are you kidding? I used to run xterm and Emacs over 2400 baud and it was tolerable,

          Your example is inconclusive. Network speed has two independent components: bandwidth and latency. Just because your modem had poor bandwidth doesn't mean the latency was also bad.

          And indeed, many aspects of the X11 protocol involve almost gratuitous round-trip queries that can make high latency a killer. Often it's aspects of the GUI toolkits that create this problem- a pretty effect that seems cool & fast on a localbox can be sluggish on the network.

          Specific real-life example: in Evolution, you move an email from one folder to another, and the application draws a little translucent icon flying from origin to destination as a feedback indicator. It covers about 200 pixels distance, and for each step, the applcation downloads the remote image of the workspace under that position, alpha-blends a pixmap ontop of it, and sends the pixmap back to the viewer.

          On a long-haul link, this can take MINUTES, during which you can't interact with any X11 programs. If you were running the program under VNC, however, the whole animation would be over before a screen update is even transmitted. While the user has missed-out on some eye-candy, this is far better than waiting through all the bidirectional traffic.

          On the other hand, TightVNC is not usable for serious work even over a cable modem.

          For truely serious work, it's not usable even on a loopback interface to localhost.

          Even if everything else was the same, VNC has to refresh the whole screen,

          False. VNC is an extensible protocol, so it can support arbitrarily intelligent update mechanisms. But even the original generation of VNC clients were smart enough only to update the screen regions that were actually changing.

          (If your VNC experience has primarily been with the Windows server, you might not have noticed this, but that's because it was difficult for them to interface with the server without full screen-scraping and mouse-yanking, as Windows wasn't designed to allow concurrent users)

    • Re:The point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fearlezz ( 594718 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:07AM (#11090811)
      they suggest it's for use in public access Windows boxes
      Great idea. There's only one problem with public access Windows boxes: they cannot be trusted. Public access machines may have keyloggers, backdoors and stuff. I don't want anyone to see my password because I login from a windows box. Don't trust internet cafe's... So, personally, I was thinking more of using this when I'm visiting family and friends.

      • Great idea. There's only one problem with public access Windows boxes: they cannot be trusted. Public access machines may have keyloggers, backdoors and stuff. I don't want anyone to see my password because I login from a windows box. Don't trust internet cafe's... So, personally, I was thinking more of using this when I'm visiting family and friends.

        S/Key [wikipedia.org] is your friend, and supported as a login mechanism for ssh.

        So, configure ssh to use S/Key, generate some one time pass phrases, and carry this l

        • Re:The point? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:14AM (#11090976)
          So, configure ssh to use S/Key, generate some one time pass phrases, and carry this live CD with you. Login remotely to your system, be careful not to do anything which is security sensitive, and you are set.

          No you're not. If the client machine is compromised, one-time logins cannot protect you. The local SSH client could do evil things in a hidden side-channel to your actual work.

          I've seen proof-of-concept modifed SSH clients which secretly download files from the remote homedir whenever anyone connects to anyplace (and that's in addition to logging all the activities of the session, of course).

          With work, the operating system could be modified to recognize known popular SSH clients (such as putty.exe on your USB drive, or this X LiveCD thing), and secretly replace it with a compromised version when you attempt to run from your supposedly-trusted removable media.

          to do anything which is security sensitive,

          Um... if the activity was genuinely insensitive to security, you could run naked telnet. It's true that attacks like I described are probably rare enough that many people would be willing to run the risk, but they should still be aware of the threats and make that choice on their own. Elaborate multi-part attacks will only become more common as time goes by.

          • Re:The point? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Q2Serpent ( 216415 )
            The point here is that ssh is running off of your CD. Unless the public Windows machine is smart enough to see your ssh loaded into memory and switch it with another on the fly...

            Please loosen your tin foil hat just a little.
      • So, personally, I was thinking more of using this when I'm visiting family and friends.

        When I'm out and about, my laptop's Linux install speaks for itself [ioerror.us]. I've converted more people to Linux by sitting them down in front of it for ten minutes than by all evangelizing.

    • Re:The point? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Random Data ( 538955 )
      Replying to myself... Oh dear.

      Thinking about it, I just realised I flagged myself as someone who's been using Windows too much (or at least using single user machines). Using an X server means you can have multiple people accessing a single largish back end server, which isn't doable with VNC. For example - you're in a University/College course with a small number of terminals, but there's a Windows lab with network access. You've spent too much on cheap alcohol^W^Wtextbooks to afford a decent PC or net

    • Re:The point? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      I was going to ask what the point was, given the number of Live CDs such as Knoppix, etc.

      Although it's improved with the recent 3.7 release, there are still many, many PC hardware configurations that Knoppix won't run on- and many more where it won't be able to initialize the network device. That's especially common if you have a software modem, a newer WiFi card (like 802.11g), or if you need to use a VPN (even if a Linux client does exist, installing it after booting a livecd would be a pain).

      The scr
      • This CD is a nice demonstration of free software tools but it's no substitute for rebooting to a normal Linux system. SSH on windows is a bad joke and that eliminates 99% of this CD's utility. Knoppix is both a better tool for your own needs and as a demonstration of the power and beauty of free software.

        ... rebooting is awkward and inelegant. Don't go around killing your friends' uptimes just to run a few progs on your home machine.

        That's funny when you consider that the awkwardness of Winblows is t

    • I still suspect VNC on a USB key or CD might be easier, and the difference between forwarding X and using VNC isn't that much in my experience.

      That's not my experience. As part of a recent OS upgrade to my office's server, I installed KDE3 over XF86 with TightVNC using a 100Mbit LAN (hubbed rather than switched, but with only 3 workstations using it primarily for internet access and IMAP e-mail it doesn't make a huge difference). The performance was abysmal. Redraws when new applications were opened ty

  • Perhaps a misnomer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spagetti_code ( 773137 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @03:57AM (#11090781)
    A liveCD to me is one that is bootable - and for a moment I got pretty excited. A bootable minimalist CD that pops up an XServer ready to go. Pretty cool - like a lite X terminal you can carry around on a CD.

    The reality is a little less exciting - just a program you can run from a CD. (yawn).

  • coLinux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Henk Poley ( 308046 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:01AM (#11090796) Homepage
    Do they also include coLinux [colinux.org] on the CD? Being able to run Linux from a LiveCD directly onder windows would be a really nice feature me thinks.
    • > Do they also include coLinux on the CD?

      From the coLinux site: "Unlike in other Linux virtualization solutions such as User Mode Linux (or the forementioned VMware), [b]special driver software on the host operating system[/b] is used to execute the coLinux kernel in a privileged mode (known as ring 0 or supervisor mode)."

      So no, it's not exactly LiveCD material. If you need to have a coLinux installation CD handy then just burn your own...
      • Well, I cannot find any evidence that Windows (NT derivatives) needs to be rebooted when installing the TAP-Win32 driver. For example see this guide on the coLinux wiki:

        http://www.colinux.org/wiki/index.php/StepByStep In XP
        • There are two drivers, the colinux driver (linux.sys) and the tap-win32 driver (for the virtual network interface to the guest system).

          I don't think any reboots are necessary, however it needs to have write access to %windir%\system32 (to install the driver files) and to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry section, which typically means you need to be logged in as administrator.

          You also need a disk image of the root to be booted, although I guess this could be a file on the CD.
  • I actually prefer PuTTY over OpenSSH myself (on Windows -- OpenSSH is fine on any other OS). No need to go through another layer to access the network. Other than that, wouldn't it run into problems running off the CD, especially if write access is required? Just a thought.
    • Putty is the better SSH client, but cygwin provides SSHD, so you can remotly connect to your box from elsewhere.

      Also, with commandline ssh, you can run scripts to set up ssh tunnels (with ssh keys) and automate and encrypt your network connections.

      I use it to tunnel a box that is networked out, I can tunnel rsync from a linux box with no network access through my windows box. SSH and the other utils with cygwin are WAY more powerful than 1 application alone.

      • PuTTY has a few other command line utilities which come with it that let you do this stuff.

        Oddly, I've found myself needing PuTTY on Linux to use SSH to reach dozens of remote systems which did not have public/private key enabled... PuTTY lets you break the rules and put your password on the command line.

        The app has improved over the years.

    • I'm sure you meant otherwise, but saying you prefer [a client] over [a protocol] makes no sense. I use putty to connect to my linux firewall which runs openssh.
  • Like this one [jcraft.com]. You can just publish it as an applet on UNIX host's web server and access it from a browser on any platform without any install at all.

    Last I checked, Cygwin X server takes over your whole screen by default and doesn't look native even in rootless mode. Has any progress been made recently?

  • Cygwin RULES (Score:4, Informative)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:16AM (#11090835) Journal
    I use cygwin in a few different places. One our file server is running NT, put cygwin on there and it like a real server ;)

    Also, Since I'm booted into XP most of the time, cygwin fills the nitch of having sshd to copy files back too, perl for running some reports, X for those server admin applications, even vi when I need to do some text work. (Ya, I said vi)

    I was running Linux with VMware for XP, but the resources wasted, and no VPN software that worked with our nortel vpn connection, decided to just use cygwin, perfect choice.

    Couple things, You can have real RXVT term's without X they run stand alone, and you can customize with normal black backgrounds, right side bars, etc. It also supports Rootless for seemless looking with windows. (Like OSX.) Comes with links, super quick to read heavy text sites, no popup banners, and color/frame support. I use it to read slashdot, and if someone looks over my shoulder, they just see text.

    KDE under cygwin runs ok, few bugs, but since I just needed a manager, I went with windowmaker (Or rootless). Save the resources. (Old habits..) Konsole is nice, with tab's, I just with there was a tabbed RXVT then life would be truly sweet. (No tabbed putty yet, come on!)

    Cygwin is the first software I install on a new windows system, just makes the whole thing usable. I recommend it to anyone doing work. I dont know how it compares to ActivePerl or others, since I've been using cygwin's for years, havn't had a need to switch.

    BTW, a native port of nethack would be nice in the default install... And since I'm making requests, (hint to any Cygwin developers) how about real native selectable for download, icewm, screen and irssi(with ssl). Maybe VNC also. So I can remotely run X software off a Windows box over an ssh tunnel. (Production networks, security, makes an admin work harder..)
    -
    Halliburton, they get no bid contracts, they hire columbian mercs to watch the oil pipelines, and have more armored vechicals than the US Army in IRAQ. Don't join the Army, Join Halliburton!

    • Konsole is nice, with tab's, I just with there was a tabbed RXVT then life would be truly sweet. (No tabbed putty yet, come on!)

      No point in having tabbed terminal emulators when you use GNU Screen [gnu.org]. Just a couple of keybindings to learn (^A c to create a new "tab", ^A 0 or ^A 1 and so on to see the Nth tab). Would work in PuTTY too, and all terms I can think of.

      I personally hate all these Konsoles, gnome-terminal and others that take forever to load - if I wanted bells and whistles, I wouldn't use the c

      • Tabbed A-term.
      • I don't know how screen is performing today, but it surely didn't compare to a true Xterm compatible terminal back when I needed it (a year ago). For example: try the following escape strings with and without screen and compare the differences: "\e[4mHello world!\e[m" (shall be underlined on terminals capable of rendering underlined characters), "\e[5mHello world!\n[m" (shall blink or have a bright background on ANSI terminals), and "\e[7mHello world!\e[m" (shall be reversed on ANSI terminals), and I won't
      • No point in having tabbed terminal emulators when you use GNU Screen.

        "screen" is great, but you didn't mention one big advantage that it provides: you can reconnect to already-running programs when you log back in.

        I frequently start a long compile or download inside screen, then connect once I'm back at home and see if it finished correctly. VNC shares this benefit, but X11 does not: if your network goes down, all your applications are instantly gone (often taking the data with them)

        I personally hate
    • ``I just with there was a tabbed RXVT then life would be truly sweet.''

      GNU screen, or if you want visible tabs, Konsole (you said KDE worked).
    • I use cygwin in a few different places. One our file server is running NT, put cygwin on there and it like a real server

      Why not put Linux with Samba? Even if the PHBs don't like it, I bet you could boot with Knoppix and run it as a Samba server and they'd never know the difference.

      • But if they did notice, you get canned. Too much risk for the benefit. Backing management's stupid decisions whilst looking for a better job is reality in the tech industry.
  • Most popular unix tools already have windows binaries available, like GNU utilities for Win32 - http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
    It's a little outdated but you can easily find newer versions of particular tools you like, also with practical GUI if you'd like. http://www.lexique.org/undows/ [lexique.org]
    Then there's VNC, Putty..
  • Now you can carry Cygwin with you! I have been looking for something like this for a long time.

    You have been looking for a long time? I have been carrying around a flash card with ssh keys, Putty, a fat installation of Cygwin with every tool you oodled over, along with ethreal and various other network tools for like 2 years. I also have a backup of all this stored in a subdirectory on my iPod.

    This is like something a Wired! subscriber would get excited about: A distribution of win32 tools where all you

  • Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fearlezz ( 594718 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:38AM (#11090900)
    Just downloaded it. This CD is great! The "insert and go" character of the CD makes it very useful.

    Only one comment: the .ssh directory should not be placed on the desktop! :)
    • So it has an ssh client. That's good, but does it have an ssh server? That would be better. Not trying to troll, just an honest query and suggestion.

      When you need to quickly transfer files using scp from Linux to Windows without the headache of setting up Samba etc, something like this could be invaluable.

      No headache of installation - it would really be a time saver.

  • NoMachine (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ari Rahikkala ( 608969 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:30AM (#11091012) Journal
    Incidentally, I've set up FreeNX [nomachine.com] to let a couple of my friends test out Linux desktops (primarily KDE, since I have had some problems with getting GNOME to work over NX - I'll ask about it in a senseful way as soon as I've actually started to figure out what's wrong). It's behind a 512/512 DSL connection, and comments on the speed of the session have ranged from "I've tried a Linux desktop before, and this lagged the same way as that did" to "shockingly fast, almost as fast as VNC to the box that's sitting by my feet". X11 isn't shabby, I guess, but it's not nearly as impressive as NX is.

    And before you ask, no, I did *not* need to install any non-free software on this box to get a NX server going. Gentoo's Portage has currently FreeNX 0.2.4, and 0.2.7 is available from bugs.gentoo.org. The rest of what you need for NXx serving was opensource from the start.

    Oh, and by the way, I love the way NX causes further confusion regarding the question of what's a client and what's a server. In the case of FreeNX: You use nxclient to connect to an ssh server, where nxserver is the login shell of the user "nx" (as which you authenticate yourself first). nxserver starts the servers it needs, and the client applications connect to the X server on the client through the servers started by nxserver, which are clients to the nxproxy on the client :).

    • Aye, I'm having problems with gnome too.
      I'm running Mepis updated to latest deb packages with FreeNX from Kalyxo and gnome keeps complaining.

      If I get a seperate character console onto the same machine I can kill some of the gnome processes and then it carries on and starts up gnome, but not very well.

      Other people have had gnome startup problems related to audio; my gnome box is actually colinux under winXP therefore no audio either; maybe related?

      I also can't get freeNX audio forwarding to work, I think

  • I guess I dont get the responses here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Seraphim_72 ( 622457 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:30AM (#11091016)

    This is actually a very nice thing to have, it writes no permanent files to the HD, no need to reboot, and you have the ability to run your X apps where ever you are, over a single port to no less.

    That means I can use *my* browser, with all of my short cuts and plugins (or lack there of) and I only have to keep one configured instead of the current three that I do now. Also you get to use all of your own apps, configured the way you like them. And because it is all done securely, on your own machine, surf for what ever you want "Harold down the hall was caught surfing for porn, inspect his machine" "I don't know what they saw, but only thing on ther was mens boxer pictures from WalMart's website." Actually the more I think about it this is a great privacy tool that can be easily handed out.

    Light, responsive and it allows you to bring even non-ported F/OSS programs to a Windows desktop. I realy don't see what there is to be down on this about. Congrats to the people developing it.

    Sera

  • installed or not? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Errtu76 ( 776778 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @05:31AM (#11091022) Journal
    FTA:
    The software runs from the CD without being installed

    and a few lines down:

    The wizard presents a menu of reading documentation, running the X Server from the CD and installing the software to the hard drive

    So, does it run completely from cd or not? If it really needs to install stuff to the harddisk it could form a problem in work environments where users might not have write access to the harddisk.
  • One thing that seems to be missing from every open-source for Windows distribution I've looked at is an NFS client. I can see why you wouldn't want to give a Windows box access to your files...but what if you do want to?
    • I fiddled with Windoze NFS clients and servers some time ago. No doubt they've improved but at the time I decided that Samba was a better solution because you can establish ad-hoc sharing much more easily.
  • At over 300M, the XLive CD image is a bit chunky for what I'd want - an X server that I can have on my 256M USB memorystick.

    I'd love to have a good X server, an SSH client that DOESN'T save things to the registry (unlike PuTTY), and perhaps FireFox so that when I visit relatives who run Windows I can SSH back home.

    Has anybody else tried stripping this image down a bit? Between trying to get a software release cut at work and getting ready for a trip I'm a mite busy now.
  • Damn Small Linux embedded is the best. I have my SSH keys and the liek on there then when I am in someone else's office and need to ssh into the server, pop my USB key in, boot the linux distro in a window (on windows or Linux) and do the work, shutdown, yank the key out and the Windows desktop is untouched. Life is good. No need for this cygwin live cd.

  • This is news? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by triskaidekaphile ( 252815 ) <xerafin@hotmail.com> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @08:35AM (#11091558) Homepage

    I made just such a CD for myself nearly 3 years ago so that I could have cygwin (particularly SSH), emacs, CVS, Java, and Mozilla with me wherever I happened to be, such as in the classroom. The fun part was getting the autorun feature to properly set up the paths. I also made use of the TMP variable as the directory where I could write to the local disk when needed. I suppose what I really should do is establish a RAM disk.

    I have recently even been considering migrating to a DVD so I can install the full cygwin installation along with Firefox and plugins; music and video players and rippers; some USB device drivers for my camera, MP3 players, voice recorder, and smart media scanner; and if I can figure it out also the synchronization software for my phone and PDA so I am not tied to a single machine!

    I suppose you could add games, too., as if I had time for such things. Hm... the CD emulator with the CD images... I could perhaps include a few of my favorite classics!

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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