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2006-10-02

Accessing Ubuntu from Windows with FreeNX

[ORIGINAL POST - 06/02/2006]
My coworker, Andy Mei mentioned FreeNX to me. I checked out the Ubuntu Forums on FreeNX and FreeNX Wiki page. It's a two-part (client/server) software...

To install FreeNX on my ubuntu dapper,

First I added the following line to my /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://free.linux.hp.com/~brett/seveas/freenx dapper-seveas freenx
you can try other repositories.

If you do not want to get gpg errors, import them:
  • sudo gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 1135D466
  • sudo gpg --export --armor 1135D466 | sudo apt-key add -
Then I,
  • fired up Snaptic Package Manager,
  • clicked reload to get updared package list from the newly added repository
  • then searched for freenx
  • marked it and clicked apply
To make installation simple, I did not enable ssh. Then, I went to NoMachine's website & downloaded NX Windows Client.

Result is a very fast & easy connection from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux (see screenshot above).

Ahh, don't try to be smart and install it from cmd line `sudo apt-get install freenx`. I know people who did and suffered ;-)

[UPDATE - 09/29/2006]
OK, I take that back! I now have a beta version of Ubuntu Edgy Eft (Knot 3) running on my linux box and I installed it from command line:
sudo apt-get install freenx
I chose No machine keys during the set up and it works just fine!

[UPDATE - 10/02/2006]
I downloaded the new NxClient (2.1.0-6) from NoMachine.com. It failed to connect to my Ubuntu
NX> 704 Session cache: unix-gnome
NX> 707 SSL tunneling: 0
/usr/lib/nx/nxserver: line 891: 27507 Terminated              
( sleep $AGENT_STARTUP_TIMEOUT; exit 1 )
NX> 105 NX> 504 Session startup failed.
NX> 1004 Error: nxagent failed to start with: Unrecognized option: 1
NX> 1001 Bye.
Apparently, it needs a compatible client/server installation...

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