Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

6/4/2003

XWindows and Free Software

Filed under: Fun,Fun Work,Geek Work,Linux — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:49 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

I’m really enjoying my Linux+ certification.

So, last week I installed RedHat version 9. Which, incidentally, is the best version I’ve used yet. The installer is really easy and detected my hardware very well. And, the end result of the install was more than satisfactory.
But, the thing is, I do most of my work on a Windows 2000 Pro workstation and I hate having those damn switchboxes. So, what to do? I started looking around for an XWindows client that would let me have a remote desktop. Well, there were lots of pricey solutions and we have a copy of Exceed, but I wanted something free and, if possible, Open Source. There ended up being just one answer: Cygwin/XFree86. Now, I’m not going to lie and say it was a cinch to install and configure, but it didn’t take me all day. And, in fact, the trickiest part of the whole thing was getting the settings right on my RedHat machine. So, now, I have a remote desktop to my Linux machine. All this and I get paid, too! I love my job!

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