Tarotoast’s Stuff

GDM over VNC was great, until I discovered FreeNX. FreeNX was based on NX technologies by NoMachine. Quoted from Wikipedia:

NX technology is a computer program that handles remote X Window System connections, and attempts to greatly improve on the performance of the native X11 protocol to the point that it can be usable over a slow link such as a dial-up modem.

You see that right, dial-up modem. It’s been three days now since I’ve installed FreeNX on the Hardy VPS on SliceHost. Result? Impressive. Not only there’s barely anything you have to configure, it also tunnels connections through ssh by default to give better security. What makes it a winning choice is that it does not get disconnected :) In the previous VNC setup, if I’m disconnected and server did not realize, I have to log in and do a kill-all-pid-by-user script to finish off all processes related to the dead x-session. Maybe there’s workaround (I’m pretty sure there is), but I didn’t bother looking it up. With NX, say byebye to disconnections and hello to the sweet working x-session. Installation instruction for Ubuntu Gusty and Hardy is availble here: Installing FreeNX in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy. Summary:

1. Add apt-source and key:
   deb http://www.datakeylive.com/ubuntu hardy main
   deb-src http://www.datakeylive.com/ubuntu hardy main

   wget http://www.datakeylive.com/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/wjeremy.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
   sudo apt-get update

2. Install all necessary packages (seperately install X if you haven’t):

   sudo apt-get install expect openssh-server tcl8.4 dbus-x11 libxcomp3 libxcompext3 libxcompshad nxlibs nxagent nxproxy nxclient freenx-server

3. Make sure font path in /etc/X11/xorg.conf is set correctly like the following:

   Section "Files"
   
   # path to defoma fonts
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
         FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
         FontPath     "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
   EndSection

4. Add user:

   sudo nxserver --adduser xxxx

5. Download Client

總之，很好用就是了 XD