Or just Xpra, for that matter--- Xpra was written as a replacement for NX (http://lwn.net/Articles/343389/), and they have heavily overlapping functionality, so it seems odd to use both rather than picking one.
It doesn't look like it. If you need a remote desktop, NX is the way to go, in my opinion. However, I do use Xpra for long-running programs because I don't want to have a full-blown X server running all the time.
I used Xpra today to run a small console program on my headless server, and I attached to it from my laptop. It worked very well, until I changed my ssh port to some nonstandard one. Bye-bye, attach functionality...
Does anyone know of a way to specify the ssh port?
I use Xpra, but it's a little buggy. E.g., buttons don't always appear in the right position within a dialog. Sometimes it hangs up and I have to restart it. Some fairly complex apps don't like to run under it (I think I had this problem with IntelliJ IDEA, which also isn't entirely happy under VNC/twm). Also, running XEmacs under Xpra is a bit slow for some reason.
I use VNC day in and day out, and Xpra has not replaced VNC for me, though I originally thought it might. The rootless model is cool.
Wow is using NX without a commercial license really that painful? We use it at work amd it's great; much snappier than VNC.
Xpra sounds great but I'm concerned about the lack of support for various features, and -judgung from the FAQ- the author's perception that they're not important.
Yeah, the open-source version of NX isn't really ready to run; it's just a GPL'd library of the core functionality. The FreeNX project produced a working, distributable version (http://freenx.berlios.de/), but it seems to have lost steam--- no releases since 2008. There's also a reimplemented version from Google, though it's not actively developed anymore either: http://code.google.com/p/neatx/
(X on EC2: http://blog.decaresystems.ie/index.php/2007/05/23/amazon-web...)
(FreeNX: http://freenx.berlios.de/)