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Nomachine NX installed for Remote Desktop

Posted: July 22nd, 2009 | Author: Amitay Dobo | Filed under: Technology | 3 Comments »

Just installed NoMachine NX Free edition on my Ubuntu machine. Free NX is a client and server that allows you to control a remote desktop. It runs on top of SSH and has some magical technology (enhancement of the X11 protocol) that is supposed to accelerate it and make it faster than other solutions like VNC.

I came to this after I found out that logmein do not support linux. At least not for their server software. As a punishement, they don’t get linked in this post (that’s gotta hurt), and I’m delaying my investment in them (When we used their services on my last company I said I’m gonna put some money into them once they have their IPO, and just now they did). Back to NoMachine NX:

The installation was pretty much a breeze. Just downloaded the Client, Node and Server and installed them, in that order using gdebi-gtk (which was opened by default by FireFox).

In order to run the server running I had to install the ssh daemon. That was as simple as “sudo apt-get install ssh”. I think both Ubuntu 9.04 and ssh default configuration have port 22 open for all. Note to self: start using iptables or some firewall soon.

Then, to test it, I started my seldom used OpenSuse virtual machine, installed just the client, configured a new connection and Viola. Well, through the LAN (not even that, it’s a VM network adapter, should be like a loopback) It runs quite smooth. There was still some lag initiating the connection. Then, to make things funny, I tried shadow desktop mode, which connects to the current user. I’m a great fan of this mirror across mirror software simulations :) Here’s the picture of how it looks:

Holly Mirror!

Holly Mirror!

Looking forward to try out connecting to it from another computer, let you (the non-existent reader) know about that. Wikipedia bummed me stating that NoMachine’s NX windows client isn’t free, but their page states it is “free forever“. Might have to fix that.

Just found out that google just launched their NX technology based server. Maybe something they need for their up and coming operating system? Or just for their internal IT? Anyway, glad to know I put my technology bets the same place google place them (only I invested 1 hour, I believe they invested more than that into their server).

3 Comments on “Nomachine NX installed for Remote Desktop”

  1. 1 John Watts said at 3:18 am on July 24th, 2009:

    Glad to see you are enjoying our software. Thanks for using NX technology and we hope you enjoy your experience.

    Kind Regards,

    /John

  2. 2 Amitay Dobo said at 4:06 am on July 24th, 2009:

    Thank you for providing us with this fine piece of software John. Edited the wikipedia article about NX Technology to reflect the licensing as I understand it from your products page.

  3. 3 Katie Glossner said at 10:26 pm on July 27th, 2009:

    We are glad to hear that you are so pleased with our product. We think you will be even happier and more amazed with NX 4.0 which is due to be released at the end of this year or the beginning of next. It will create a whole new NX, expanding the capabilities of what is possible and will be our most monumental release yet. Please visit our website at http://www.nomachine.com to learn more.

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