X on Windows

X Windows is the primary graphical interface used on Linux systems and is available as a user-space application on the Macintosh OS X from Apple. If you're familiar with how it works and need to administer Windows systems, you may find yourself needing to access your "home" system from a Windows computer.

Windows was never meant to be a multiuser system...an extension to this philosophy led to more popularity for screen-viewing (and desktop-control programs) like VNC, Virtual Network Computing. Linux has this ability (with the VNC protocol, no less) but there's a difference in how remote desktop control compares to running a remote application using X.

So the next challenge is how to access these applications from a Windows system. The method I most often use is the XLiveCD. You pop it in, let the wizard run so you can answer a couple quick questions about your mouse, and then you're greeted by a BASH prompt. From there you secure shell (again with the SSH program! This means you need to be able to access your system remotely with secure shell, I'm afraid) with the -X or -Y switch so it will forward X sessions, and once you log in, you can run your program. XLiveCD will leave files behind only if it crashes or your computer decides to restart in the middle of a session; if you exit XLive by closing all the programs and the XTerm prompts, then right clicking the "X" in the system tray and selecting quit the program will clean up after itself and leave nothing on your Windows computer.

Unfortunately it looks like this isn't being updated anymore...the name of the CD implies that it was built in December of 2004. On the plus side that image is still for the most part working on systems I usually test it on.

An alternative is to use Xming. Unfortunately it requires installation on the local system, but it's small and relatively unobtrusive. This also means that it's really only feasible to use it on systems that you're often accessing while XLiveCD allows you to be far more migratory and use a large number of systems in your travels without leaving files and cruft behind. XMing also requires you to use an additional program...again, small and unobtrusive...like PUTTY to initiate the secure shell connection. Each of the Putty programs are a standalone executable, so they're primarily a download to a folder then point Xming to the appropriate program to set things up. Xming is a bit more work to set up but works relatively well in the instances I've tested it out.

Those are the two free methods I end up using to connect to my remote systems for tasks like reading email (I have special filtering rules and such in place). Handy for any sysadmin using Linux as their primary system in a Windows world!