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An installation guide from CentOS says simply,

"Select the connection type, the desktop system you want to use,"

The NoMachine client install page simply says,

"Unix – run either a X11 desktop as KDE, GNOME, CDE and XDM or a single application by choosing the Custom option."

As if you could select the DE like choosing a medium or large shirt. Clearly one system must have a DE installed, and I assume its the server (I think I've read as much on another resource). Its strange to me both of these sites fail to make this point.

The reason I ask is because I can't get a connection between a new install of ArchLinux using xWindows and EvilWM, and a new install of CentOS6 using KDE. I've not installed any of the supported X11 desktops on the client, nor do I wish to (my laptop is so fast loading right now, you'd think it was a light switch).

xtian
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  • Just for the sake of clarity (and cause the new version of nomachine is my current personal experiment) - you might want to differentiate between nx3/freenx and nx4 in your question. – Journeyman Geek Oct 17 '13 at 07:35

2 Answers2

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NX uses and requires the desktop packages and libraries on the server system. However, the server system does not need to run in graphical mode (runlevel 5).

ewwhite
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Its been a while, but you can select a DE when you're logging in, and run a seperate persistent X session (Its like screen, on it. That said, I've not had much experience with the non-official NX3 clients (which work perfectly fine with freenx) - I'd try the official NX3 clients.

If you're not tied into NX3 and open source, NX4 has a free version that is pretty good, but it works more like VNC or RDP, in that it lets you access a currently logged in session, rather than letting you create a new session.

In both cases, they do use the desktop packages and libraries, necessarily, since nx does need to support windows and linux client packages. Its simply a heavily accelerated remote desktop package, and doesn't rely on any specific client configuration.

Journeyman Geek
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  • Thanks. I was having trouble and having not used any Remote Desktop software before, I wasn't sure exactly how it was all working, hence the Q. I've assumed the CentOS-EL limitation and only install on the server what's available via YUM & supported in Arch repos. That said, there is an RDP which I would have liked to try, but now that NX is working, I don't know why I'd bother (>_<) – xtian Oct 17 '13 at 22:00
  • Oh, I agree on that. *when it works* NX is quite near magic. – Journeyman Geek Oct 18 '13 at 05:32