Author: Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
- X11 forwarding can be useful when a GUI is required, especially for system and configuration tools that don't have a CLI interface. Here's how to set up and use X11 Forwarding on Linux and Mac.
- Popular Alternatives to Xming for Windows, Software as a Service (SaaS), Mac, Linux, Web and more. Explore 9 apps like Xming, all suggested and ranked by the AlternativeTo user community.
- About X11 for Mac. X11 is no longer included with Mac, but X11 server and client libraries are available from the XQuartz project. Apple created the XQuartz project as a community effort to further develop and support X11 on Mac. The XQuartz project was originally based on the version of X11 included in Mac OS X v10.5.
One of the nice things about the X Window System is its ability to display X apps running remotely on a local machine. One of the not-so-nice things about Microsoft Windows is the complete lack of native support for displaying X applications. If you find yourself working on Windows but wanting to use Linux apps at the same time, Xming can do the job. Xming is a port of X Window System to Microsoft Windows that’s free and easy to use.
Xming is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), and comes packaged as Windows executables with easy-to-use installers. If all you want is an X Window Server — and not a complete Unix-type environment — Xming is a better choice than Cygwin/X. It also has the advantage of more active development — Cygwin/X hasn’t been updated since 2004, according to its homepage.
Using Xming on Windows. Xming is a freely available X server for Windows. It uses PuTTY, a built-in SSH client, to forward the display. Note: These instructions assume you are using the version of PuTTY built into and distributed with Xming. Microsoft Windows. There are several open source packages for X11 available for Windows. In the Spring of 2011, COS 333 had students use Xming.
Xming is trivial to install. Head to the Xming project page and find the releases section. You probably want to stick to the stable releases unless there’s a feature in the recent development releases that you can’t live without. Grab the current Xming, or Xming-mesa, if you have an older client that might need the Mesa renderer instead of OpenGL, and run the setup wizard. It takes a minute or so to run through the install. You’ll probably also want to grab the Xming-fonts installer, which installs the core X fonts. After you’ve installed these packages, you’re ready to start running X on Windows.
Getting started
The Xming installation procedure creates a desktop shortcut called XLaunch. Double-click it and you’ll see a dialog that lets you choose whether Xming displays programs in multiple windows, a single window, fullscreen, or in a single window without a title bar.
What’s with all the options? Depending on what you plan to do, you may want to run several windows on your Windows desktop in order to display several different programs. On the other hand, you might choose to connect to a machine using the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) and display an entire desktop on your Windows machine.
If you’re going with the multiple programs scenario, choose “Multiple Windows.” You can also set the display number at the bottom of the dialog. Leave this as 0 if this is the first connection that you’re making, or set to 1 (or 2, or 3, etc.) if you’re making multiple X connections. If you forget, you’ll get an error when trying to start up a subsequent session.
On the next window, choose the session type. For this type of connection, choose “Start a program,” and click Next.
In the next dialog, click “Run Remote” and click the radio button next to “Using PuTTY” and fill out the user and host information. If you don’t enter your password here, you’ll be prompted for it when Xming connects to the remote system.
Assuming all goes well, you’ll get an xterm from the remote system. You can then either work in the xterm or start an X application in the xterm that will be displayed on the local system using Xming.
You can also run something other than an xterm when connecting to the remote system. In the Start program dialog, just enter the name of the program you want to run in place of xterm. It’s slightly counterintuitive, because the name of the program appears in a drop-down box and looks like you’d select something from a list rather than type in a free-form name, but you can enter your own program here. I like having an xterm or other terminal program, though, so I can start as many apps as I like.
I’ve used Xming with stock X applications (like xcalc) and GNOME and KDE apps (like Epiphany, Konqueror, Gnome-terminal, and others) and had no problems running the applications. Other than having the standard Microsoft Windows title bar and such, these apps look just as they would on Linux.
Run an entire desktop
You can also use Xming to turn your Windows machine into a X terminal, more or less. Again, click the XLaunch icon, and this time select “One Window” or “Fullscreen.” Next, select “Open session via XDMCP” on the Session type dialog. On the next dialog, you can choose to connect to a specific host, or you can tell Xming to search for XDMCP servers.
The next dialog allows you to specify additional parameters. You probably won’t need to give Xming any additional parameters, but if you need to specify a remote font server, this is the dialog to do it in.
Finally, you can save the configuration if you want and reuse it later. Once you click Finish, you should see whatever X login manager is running on the system you’re connecting to.
Xming is easy to use and provides an excellent X server for folks who have to run Windows. Since it’s free software, it’s also much better for the budget than commercial X servers for Windows, and it enjoys fairly frequent releases, so it should be around for some time to come.
Category:
- Networking
Contents
- Linux
- Mac OS X
- Windows
- Connecting via the NX protocol
You can run interactive applications that have Graphical User interfaces (GUI) by connecting to the cluster login node using ssh with X11 Forwarding enabled. Your local machine must be running an X server and enable X11 forwarding in order to display graphical output.
ON UNIX-like systems, an X Window System server is generally available and running with the default installation (or can be readily installed via the OS package manager). You can enable X11 Forwarding (that is the ability to visualize GUI applications running on the cluster on your local linux box) by adding the -X flag to the ssh command you use to connect to the cluster:
Microsoft project alternative for mac.
ssh -X login_id@hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu
where
login_id
is replaced by your cluster user name.Alternatively, you can override the ssh default for all your sessions on the Hoffman2 cluster by creating (or adding to) a file named
config
in the $HOME/.ssh on your local machine and adding the option:Host hoffman2
Hostname=hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu
User=login_id
ForwardX11 yes
where
login_id
Belkin number pad for mac. is replaced by your cluster user name. You can then login on the cluster as user login_id
simply issuing: Mass effect andromeda for mac.ssh hoffman2
Notes for X Window System users
The X.org Foundation leads the X Window System project and its software forms the basis for all the X packages from the various linux distributions. Starting in Xorg 1.17 (running on CentOS 6.9 and 7.x; Ubuntu version 15.04 and up and other linux distributions) indirect GLX was disabled by default, to enable indirect GLX and to allow remote visualization on the cluster of applications that use OpenGL (such as Abaqus, matlab, etc.) on your linux box you will have to locate the executable file Xorg (which is located in /usr/bin in CentOS), make a copy and create a wrapper to it in which Xorg is invoked with the +iglx flag.
On CentOS this can be achieved with:
mv /usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg.original
echo -e '#!/usr/bin/env bashnexec /usr/bin/Xorg.original '$@' +iglx' > /usr/bin/Xorg
chmod +x /usr/bin/Xorg
chcon --type=bin_t /usr/bin/Xorg
N.B.: You will need root privileges to implement these changes.
On Ubuntu this can be achieved with:
sudo mv /usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg.original
and than editing
/usr/bin/Xorg
to look like: #!/bin/sh
#
# Execute Xorg.wrap if it exists otherwise execute Xorg directly.
# This allows distros to put the suid wrapper in a separate package.
basedir=/usr/lib/xorg
if [ -x '$basedir'/Xorg.wrap ]; then
exec '$basedir'/Xorg.wrap '$@'
else
exec '$basedir'/Xorg '$@' +iglx
fi
Xming For Mac Download
The computer will need to be rebooted.
On Mac OS X, the X windows system is called XQuartz. Mac OS X 10.5 10.6 and 10.7 installed it by default, but as of 10.8 Apple has dropped dedicated support and directs users to the open source XQuartz. You can install XQuartz from the OS distribution media or download it from https://www.xquartz.org/.
Coreldraw for mac. The Apple terminal application can be used to connect to the cluster. Specify -Y, not -X, in the ssh command to enable X11 Forwarding (as by default, a mac assumes that an -X connection is untrusted):
Alternative To Xming
ssh -Y login_id@hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu
where
login_id
is replaced by your cluster user name. Alternatively, you can override the ssh default for your hoffman2 session creating a $HOME/ssh/config file similar to the one shown for linux logins.Notes for XQuartz users
Indirect GLX was disabled by default in Xorg 1.17, starting from XQuartz version 2.7.9, to enable indirect GLX and to allow remote visualization on the cluster you will have to issue at the terminal command prompt of your mac:
defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 enable_iglx -bool true
Mac Os X11 Forwarding
Note: You will need to reboot your machine before being able to open GUI applications on Hoffman2.
See About X11 and OS X Mountain Lion from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293. For Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger): X11 should be installed from the OS media and manually started.
On Windows third-party software needs to be installed. Here is a list of possible choices:
- MobaXterm Enhanced terminal for Windows with X11 server, tabbed SSH client, network tools and much more. Free.
- XMing and Xming fonts X Window System Server for Microsoft. Free.
- CygwinLinux-like environment for Windows. To add Cygwin/X server, select the xinit package from the X11 category. Free.
- Xshell Commercial. www.netsarang.com
Notes for MobaXterm users
- download MobaXterm Home Edition (installer edition)
- double click on the installer and follow direction to install the package
- start mobaxterm
- navigate to the “Settings” tab a window will pop up, select the “SSH” tab and click on the “SSH keepalive” box and press OK
- select the “Session” tab, a window will pop up, select “SSH”, under Remote Host enter: hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu (you can also add your username here) click OK. You will be prompted to log on the cluster
Notes for Xming users
- You will need to install PuTTY and configure it as follows:
- start PuTTY
- enter hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu in the “Host Name (or OP address)” field
- enter hoffman2 in the “Saved Sessions” field
- expand the “SSH” menu under the “Category” field (press + sing) select X11 and click the “Enable X11 forwarding” field
- select “Session” in the “Category” field and press the “Save” button
- Double click on the Xming icon
- start putty and select the dalton Saved Session and log using your username and password
Notes for Cygwin users
If you have installed Cygwin (including the X11 packages) on your Windows system, you can use the following steps to make X11-enabled connection:
- Open a Cygwin terminal
- Enter the command:
startxwin
(this starts the X11 server on your Windows computer) - In the (graphical) window that pops up, use
ssh -X
command described above.
Xming Software
Alternatively you can connect to the cluster via the NX protocol. NX is a free, secure, compressed protocol for remote X Window System connections for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, and Solaris. We currently support connecting to the Hoffman2 cluster via the NoMachine client as well as the X2Go client.