On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Marcus Birkin wrote:
Hi, First off i don't think i'm uning the correct terms... but here gos... I have got an Xserver on my linux box, i've installed a X terminal emulator on my Windows box (X-Win32) this works fine. First of all are there any free X terminal emulators for windows? and are there any X terminal emulators for Mac?
Technically the X terminal software (the bit that runs on the computer you sit at) is called the X server, and the programs you run on the Terminal Server (the Linux box) are called X clients. It's a bit counter-intuitive. You can run the Cygwin/XFree86 X server on Windows and it's free software (GPL). You can download a nicely pre-packaged version from http://www.fensystems.co.uk/CygXF86.zip This version includes some enhancements made by Fen Systems such as automatic detection of the current Windows screen size and colour depth. It is tested on Windows 95 and 98, and could also work under NT/2000. If it doesn't work, please e-mail me with the relevant information and I'll try to fix it. As for the Mac - if you run Mac OS X then you're already running an X server, since Mac OS X is a UNIX variant. You can get Linux distributions for PPC Macs if you want to use them *only* as X servers (i.e. thin client terminals) - for example, Mandrake Linux 8.0 has now been released for PPC. The MI/X X server is available as freeware for the Mac. The Windows version is somewhat limited and definitely not worth using now that Cygwin/XFree86 is available, but the Mac version looks as though it should be OK. You can get this from http://www.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/macindex.htm A few caveats: it doesn't support xauth (so there's nothing to prevent any user opening a window on your desktop, seizing control of your keyboard etc.) and nor does it support XDMCP (so you can't get a pretty graphical login screen like you can with Cygwin/XFree86 or 'normal' Linux boxes). It also doesn't come supplied with the 'standard' X set of fonts - you have to download and install these separately (and no, you can't use a font server to get round it!). HTH, Michael Brown http://www.fensystems.co.uk/ -- Fen Systems: Computers for Schools, Software for Free