Next Knoppix Release to Feature GPL'd FreeNX 238
linuxtag-reporter writes "The first day of LinuxTag, Europe's biggest Free Software event (expecting 25,000 visitors) already has one big highlight. It seems that Fabian Franz from the Knoppix Project hacked up a 'FreeNX Server' based on NoMachine's NX technology (poor NoMachine might lose business now). Fabian Franz presented a first preview of the 'GPL Edition' in a live demo together with Kurt Pfeifle. The demo showed sessions going from Germany to Italy just based on a slow WLAN connectivity (shared with hundreds of visitors). A connection lost due to bad network conditions was easily re-connected to, and a deliberately suspended session was revitalized too -- it was just like 'screen' with a GUI! A report on the official LinuxTag webpage says FreeNX will be publically released for the first time as part of the upcoming Knoppix-3.6 release. The Kalyxo project is building and hosting Debian packages of FreeNX and NX/GPL for everyone to use."
What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please assume that some readers (me, others?) don't know what "screen" is.
Maybe I should google for "linux screen knoppix" - that would be useful...
I could click on the nomachine.com link, but why should I have to?
-ac
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Insightful)
tachin: Maybe because that's the whole point of the web...you know...hyperlinks and all..?
Hah! I was right the whole point of posting an article on Slashdot is to beat nomachine.com into a quivering mass of submission!
Seriously though, simply explaining what "NX" meant might have spared nomachine's server for at least a few more minutes.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Informative)
"Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a
physical terminal between several processes (typically
interactive shells)."
I use it all the time; start an interactive job while I'm at work on a particular machine using screen, disconnect using "CTRL-A d" then go home, log into the same machine, issue the command "screen -r" and I'm right back into that shell session.
These days, I mostly use TightVNC [tightvnc.com] over a VPN pipe instead, which gives me the graphical equivalent of this.
Hope this helps.
- Leo
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
So for now it's VNC, and perhaps one of these other discussed protocols (NX, RDB) down the road.
Cheers,
- Leo
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2, Informative)
What you are looking for is xmove [debian.org].
It's not been updated since '94 and it's flakey as hell - but it allows you to move an X application from machine to machine.
It works as a proxy server between your application and the real X server - which must be listening on a TCP socket.
I've toyed with it, but not managed a great deal of success.
For those looking for MoMachine info... (Score:5, Informative)
Potential source for FreeNX Server [64.233.167.104]
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
You could, but it's currently slashdotted...no doubt by people like you and me wondering WTF the article is about.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
From what I gathered from the link before it was
Re:What does screen do? (Score:2)
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe what what the poster meant was that a news posting should at least have a basic overview of what the heck it's about.
I know what Knoppix is, I know what screen is, but I don't have a clue what NX is. Even descriptive adjectives would help.
I'm interested in finding out what NX is. Since the link is Sashdotted I can't at the moment. I've gotten side tracked by your anonymous flame. I will probably have forgotten about it by later today. So I'm left wondering.
The editors here signed million dollar contracts, revenue is coming in from ads and subscriptions, they've been at it for years.... you'd think they'd have learned at least a few basic journalism techniques.
I see a lot of wrong information posted as news. The most descriptive news items are typically when they lucked out and copied a good paragraph from the story link. Heck, they aren't even good at checking to see if they've already posted the story on their own site.
It's just laziness. I'd expect such from volunteers... but as I pointed out, they're getting paid well.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree 100% that articles should give a very brief overview (hell - a one liner would be enough) so interested people can do more reading. Without the overview we have no f-ing clue what the article is talking about. Oh yeah, a google for freenx only comes up with 2 links for porn and an intro to Linux. No help there.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
Are you personally paying them for this service? Slashdot has been like this for as long as I've been here. Nothings changed since they started making money. I say good for them. I hate people complaining about how slashdot isn't as good anymore. What do you mean? It's exactly what it was when it started. A place for links to other sites that have news nerds might find interesting, and a place to comment
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, but it has. It changed from being a hobby to being a business. A business based in part on ad revenue. And I, as a consumer, for whom those ads are targetted, certainly have every right to comment on the quality of the service.
One thing that has remained pretty much the same is the quality of the service. I expect more from professionals than I do from hobbyists. And don't kid yourself into thinking they haven't entered the realm of paid professionals.
Don't get me wrong, the Slashdot crew broke ground. I respect them for that. They were among the first to do what they do. They created something wonderful. Then they got paid and have done little more than add a couple of features to the website since then. Moderating and meta-moderating and karma may help weed some of the nonsense out of the user responses, but unless they pay attention to people like me the nonsense will continue in the articles themselves.
I intend this as constructive criticism, not a troll or a flame. I want Slashdot to stay around. I just want it to be better.
Slashdot shouldn't rest on its laurels.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:3, Insightful)
True. What we really need to do is eliminate the editors entirely. Make it so that users with high karma get to see the submissions, and moderate the news posts just like user responses (Interesting, Redundant, Innaccurate, etc). When they hit +5, they go on the front page.
The whole point of slashdot is
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
Re:What do these things do? (Score:2)
You know, I think there's money to be made setting up a good alternate to slashdot where the editors actually spend a few minutes seeing what's been posted before and editing the article blurbs.
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What do these things do? (Score:5, Funny)
Not at all. Unfortunately, there isn't even the vaguest hint of what NX is from the article -- personally, I thought it was a Needle eXchange. But I decided to Google it to check. [google.com]
I'm glad I did though, because otherwise I'd never have known they were incorporating some new lesbian porn server into forthcoming linux distros.
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this a good thing?
If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.
How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about -service- and developing code, not re-selling code over and over again without doing any work. That's the difference. They don't have to go out of business, just change their old business model.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
My hypothesis is that FOSS style business models cannot replace the current proprietary models. If everything were to go FOSS, then I think a LOT of programmers would be out of jobs. I dont' have any proof of this either, but I will point out that it's human nature not to pay for things they get for free. Selling services might work fo
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Not every economy and market will live. I'm actually someone who writes code professionally, but I can acknowledge that it's more like mathematics - very few "mathematicians" are hired to do things that they used to, because now computers and calculators can do those simple tasks. It may well be that in the future, people are unwilling to pay for applications software without source code and the rig
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
The ones you highlighted, IBM, Novell and HP, aren't necessarily good examples: they can afford to lose money on FOSS because they make plenty elsewhere.
If no-one pays for software, only for support, the cost per support incident would have to be astronomical to sustain the industry. And is there going to be enough support work to go round? Once a bug's fixed once it's fixed
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
IBM
Novell
HP
These companies make no money on FOSS software, their income comes from elsewhere. These also cater to the corporate market, limited. Many of the companies in your list sell proprietary software for Linux. They are banking on their proprietary components causing sales.
Also, this is an incredibly small list considering the size of the software industry. So yes, these are isolated cases.
You are wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing particularly new: firms will continue to give money to NoMachine for support and administration tools.
Have fun...
Re:You are wrong (Score:2)
And... NoMachine is free to incorporate anything put into the forked versions of the code back into its code tree.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Informative)
All the core NX technology is GPL. The proprietary part is based on them. What Fabian did was to take those components and create it's own version of this part.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I remember... (Score:3, Informative)
I remember trying to build it from source when it first came out, but it proved rather tricky. It's nice that someone's now put in the time to make an easy-to-compile distribution of it.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Knoppix is implementing a protocol that NX released, they also released a proprietary implementation of it. Obviously they want people to buy theirs, but they published the protocol so that others could use it to. (In turn making th
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that Windows product will never catch on!
Sorry. I had to. I couldn't help it. The voices told me to.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Astro-Man: Yeah, that Windows product will never catch on!
Actually, this is a pretty good test-case of the limits of openness and closedness. The parent poster's example was http. One might also cite X vs. its closed competitors. The counter-example is Windows, to which one might add the entire Office suite.
Now, it strikes me that under present circumstances drop-in, single-machine solutions like desktop Windows and Office can support closedness a
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
If I understand correctly, (s)he only took their Free work. The core of the NoMachine product is GPL.
and made it available for free
Speaking strictly from a capitalist standpoint, it is good because it reduces the cost to businesses that wish to use this technology. Similarly, the freeness of HTTP software (client and server) has been a great boon to corporations that wish to provide easy access to information about their product lines. This has in turn lead to consumers making more informed decisions, which is one of the keystones of free market capitalism. (that's just the good part, in response to your question, see below for a look at the bad part)
even giving it a similar name.
The similarity in the name is the "NX" part. I believe NX is a Free protocol. This is much like referring to both Sendmail and Postfix as SMTP engines.
If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free
Very well said. This statemtnt (which clearly supports FLOSS) seems to be in contrast to the rest of your post.
which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.
All competition has this effect, whether from proprietary or Free sources. Are Chevrolet and Ford evil because they caused Yugo to go out of business?
How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?
They can't. But this makes a leap from "FreeNX removed or reduced the ability to charge twice for solving a problem once" to "developers will be unemployed." That is a spurious leap. The ideal situation, from an economic standpoint, would be for each solution to each problem to be developed once, and the development effort compensated once, freeing the development resource to move on to the next problem. The increased pool of available software labour resources would reduce the time delay businesses incur in solving their information problems, but does not necessarily reduce the time value of solving any given problem the first time. If we begin to approach software development as a temporally-oriented problem solving service, one cannot accurately predict the effect on the wages paid - the economic shift is too great to predict the result on the supply side - but the demand side will be very happy indeed.
We have not yet developed the economic models to make this a practical reality yet, but with FLOSS operating in tension with proprietary software, the economic stage has been set. This is the typical first stage in every major economic advancement - new technology, in this case zero cost reproduction of information, makes new economic models possible. The shift to the implementation of those new economic models must necessarily occur after the technological advancement, and so a period of market inefficiency occurs. It's not a bad thing, any more than Ford's assembly line was bad for Daimler Benz.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
What do you mean by proprietary? Have the F/OSS coders reused someone else's code? If so, the company will have no problem at all getting an injunction to stop them, and damages. Similarly, if this is the first ever terminal server type programme, I assume the original coders have patents and will be able to license their ideas.
Or were you just whining because some coders decided th
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of programming jobs have been, and always will be, doing custom work for a specific clients' needs (whether working in-house or as a contractor).
Free Software doesn't affect that much.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
NoMachine (Score:2, Funny)
Poor NoMachine indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
This is compounded by higher bandwidth charges due to their present Slashdotting. They'll be tits up in no time.
Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:3, Informative)
Boot up, hit Ctrl-Alt-F2, type knx-hdinstall.
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO, Knoppix provides a terrific way to introduce people to Linux. You can also use it to (more) securely surf on strange computers if you want. I see someone has linked to soemthing called Gnoppix below this - I'll be checking that out next! Live Distros rock!
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Quantian variant is very good for the latter; it has almost all of the basic GNU sci/math software: R, gnuplot, octave, &c. set up and ready to "j
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:4, Insightful)
The next biggest would be that it's an ultra-super rescue disk.
And bit less important, to me at least, but still a virtue, is that you can pop it into any machine, say a friends, one at work, or a clients and run in your prefered enviroment.
KFG
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:4, Informative)
I can boot into Knoppix, lspci, download the drivers I need from Intel's site, and put them on the disk for Windows to find.
Another good example is my boss, who's laptop drive crashed a few weeks ago. While he waited for a replacement, he ran everything off of Knoppix and a USB Key.
It's impressive stuff.
--
lds
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a great simple way to let management play with Linux too. Where in the management world of MSOutlook and MSProject they can't load Linux on their box, but they can give Knoppix a whirl on *their* box and play with it on their own. Then when you want to use Linux for your next project they are more likely to let you because it is something they have used and doesn't seem so foreign.
It might surprise you the number of people who want to play around with Linux, but just haven't yet. I put up a small note that I was giving away Knoppix disks for free at work. I have given away (averaging two) a day for the last month. Try it at your work and see what happens. You might be surprised at whom is interested in playing with Linux.
-Benjamin Meyer
Re:Knoppix is great for the KDE crowd... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kudos to developers (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be great if other distro's developers tried going the same way - be innovative, be creative!. Now it's quite boring to have hundred of Kno* and *pix distros, every one built with philosophy "take Knoppix and replace two apps with your favourite ones".
Is there any way to financially support Knoppix?
Re:Kudos to developers (Score:2)
What the hell, it happens in commercial software all the time. Jucst because the Free software poeple do it now and then doesen't make it any more whong.
MS-DOS/Quick and Dirty DOS copied CP/M
Word copied WordPerfect
Excel copies Lotus 123 who copied VisiCalc
Windows coped Mac who copied Xerox
Re:Kudos to developers (Score:3, Informative)
I, for one, feel sorry for them (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I, for one, feel sorry for them (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, they did get exactly what they deserved: widespread ad
Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:5, Interesting)
How's NX any different/better? When it first came out, I gave it a look but didn't think speed was overly impressive...
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:2, Informative)
vncserver -localhost
On the client
ssh -L5901:localhost:5901 servername
vncviewer localhost:1
There you go. The server is persistent. If the ssh connection goes down, just reconnect and restart the viewer.
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:2)
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:3, Informative)
The compression is one very good benefit. It is not simple zip-like compression of the data stream, but a somewhat smart image compression which takes advantage of the fact that it is usually transmitting a desktop with draggable rectangular windows. Compression can be optimized on special cases like that.
Multiple simultaneous desktops is something more to do with X11 than VNC, but VNC is a good way to realize this through multiple servers. Also, VNC is cross platform
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's available as part of a Dag Wieers RPM [wieers.com], so if you're running Red Hat or Fedora Core you're set. And of course the source is a google away.
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:3, Interesting)
(By the way, it is actually just connecting to your X server with nxproxy over an SSH link.)
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:2)
You can read about it on the NX website.
Re:Better than VNC through compressed ssh? (Score:3, Informative)
TightVNC is great (Score:2)
Re:TightVNC is great (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TightVNC is great (Score:2)
Re:TightVNC is great (Score:2)
While wicked slow, I also do low-level management with the compaq ILO with Advanced license that give a full remote graphical desktop via java / web browser. Very handy when the server is having problems booting.
Poor NoMachine ? (Score:3, Insightful)
NoMachine opening the specification of what they do just will have a different market if the use of they technology standarizes enough. That will open doors to they own extensions, support, being anyway as the visible head of that technology, etc. I think that some of the ESR writings explain a bit better the advantages of doing that.
Strange Bedfellows (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient
Re:Strange Bedfellows (Score:2)
Description (Score:2)
Halfway between Citrix and VNC (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Halfway between Citrix and VNC (Score:2)
The only thing the NX buys is speed, and that's really true. NX is very very fast, faster than RDP5 I would say.
If you're on a LAN, you don't even need them. You can have Citrix or Windows Terminal like services by just using X and XDMCP and XDM. That's what the
windows version (Score:2)
Also, anyone now how to push a sin
NoMachines (Score:3, Insightful)
The vast majority of companies don't create Linux products, they create Windows products, so any company that creates new software for Linux should be appreciated, even if that software is closed source.
I'm definately not suggesting that any company involved in Linux should be given a free ride, I'm just saying that we shouldn't celebrate having outflanked a company that was contributing something to Linux.
BTW, I don't know anything about NoMachines in particular. Also, generally I think that the necessity of software being open source and free depends on where it fits into your system. Personally I don't mind close source applications, but I like to have my GUI toolkit open and free.
what NX is (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/07/10/214624
from the article:
Thin client computing lets users run applications on a remote server and display the results locally. NX Client works something like VNC (see our recent story), but instead of using Remote Frame Buffer protocol, NX Client acts as an X Window server. Thin clients help contain costs by eliminating the need to install applications at each user's desktop, and improve security by limiting the availability of applications and data. The clients themselves can be dedicated hardware devices or regular computers running thin client software.
What is NX (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/07/10/21462 47.shtml?tid=11
I liked it the first time... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I liked it the first time... (Score:2)
I'm not sure if any multiuser graphical windows systems preceded X, I'm not old enough to remember.
Citrix took the X foundation and added useful features like local file and printer sharing.
introduction to NX (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.orangecrate.com/article.php?sid=677
Sad Day (Score:2)
Fix Wine (Score:2)
Its something I was looking forward to aswell...
"Poor NoMachine" (Score:3, Informative)
NX is even mildly supportive of an open-source complete solution -- on the source download page (their site is ./'ed right now) it clearly says something to the effect that they expect a community-created packages will be assembled.
Connect to windows from Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not obvious from what I've been able to connect to so far that isn't slashdotted as to whether you can connect to a Windows box from a Linux box (the orangecrate.com article linked further down shows a connection going from a windows box to a linux box)
That's actually 2 questions, though - "Does the technology support it" AND "does the LICENSE allow it?"
I'm assuming that the technical capability is there (just as it is in VNC)...
Last time I saw the EULA for a recent Windows version I saw in infamous "you may not connect with 3rd-party tools" clause in the license. Is that still there? Is using FreeNX (or VNC or anything else) to connect to a windows box remotely still a violation of the license?
X-integration (Score:2)
KDE NX? (Score:4, Informative)
For those still mystified as to what NX is, it is essentially X11 tunneled through SSH, with some clever caching to drastically limit the number of connections an X server/client need to make, to make the connection feel much quicker.
untechnical explanation: Normally a remote X session will have to make many hundreds/thousands of trips between the server and client, but NX uses a cache at both ends, only making the most necessary trips, and usually just sending a diff of the changes rather than the whole stream of data. (roughly speaking, of course, as I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.)
Re:VNC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:VNC (Score:3, Interesting)
Me, I use TightVNC over a VPN tunnel (cable modem) and it has acceptable performance. I do pay a performance hit when I use a graphical program such as a place & route tool (I'm an ASIC engineer) but it's by no means unusable.
Of course, I have been forced to use that same place & route tool over a 128Kbit ISDN line (years ago) so I'm quite pleased with what VNC allows me to do, both in terms of spee
Re:VNC (Score:2)
My one time using VNC (ThinVNC, IIRC) was over a dial-up connection. Unacceptable doesn't even begin to describe it.
SSH over a LAN? Bloody luxery! (Obligatory "Kids these days" comment)
Re:VNC (Score:2)
RDP is king for WAN links, X11 for LAN links and VNC sucks on both. ANd yes, I've tried TightVNC, it's better than standard VNC, but still sucks in comparison with the competition
I just wish Apple would license RDP for OS X, then my life would be complete.
Re:VNC (Score:3, Interesting)
Printing support. Connect to remote NX server - and print on your local printer.
Multimedia support - launch xmms remotely and hear the sound in your headphones
Re:VNC (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A day late and a dollar short (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs???? (Score:2)
I've already GOT an operating system, why would I want another one?....
(insert obligatory "it's just a joke" disclaimer here...)
Re:A day late and a dollar short (Score:2)
something like:
# display_proxy xeyes
-would land xeyes on your currnt desktop except you would have an extra option (needs support form window manager) to disconnect from your current $DISPLAY.
# display_proxy -connect xeyes
-would reconnect you to the running xeyes and direct it to what every $DISPLAY you are currently on.
I know there was a proje
Try this link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WTF is FreeNX?? (Score:3, Informative)