Hack #16. Secure, Lightweight X Connections with FreeNX
The standard X Window System is very network-intensive. FreeNX compresses and optimizes X communications and is ideally suited for slow connections such as dialups.
FreeNX is a free, GPL implementation of NoMachine's NX Server (http://www.nomachine.com). NoMachine has developed a compression technology that substantially reduces the size of X Window System communications and adds other performance improvements through caching and general protocol optimization. NoMachine provides several informative white papers about their technology and its performance at http://www.nomachine.com/documentation.php. If you're already a VNC fan, NX is definitely worth a look, for performance reasons as well as for the fact that it inherently uses SSH for secure communications between client and server.
The free and commercial versions of the NX server differ in terms of capabilities (and, of course, cost). FreeNX provides all of the core capabilities of the commercial NX server for remote connection, but it does not currently include the SMB and printing (CUPS) support provided by the commercial NX server. At the moment, commercial server licenses for NoMachine's personal edition cost around 55 euros, which is cheap. They also offer small business and enterprise licenses, which you may be interested in if you want to have product support, get updates, and get SMB and CUPS support now, rather than waiting for them to appear and mature in FreeNX. ...