Trying out NoMachine NX on Solaris 10

I had heard people talking about FreeNX and claiming how fast it was lately. I am always interested in new things, so I decided to give it a try last weekend. The part I really wanted to see is how fast this thing could be, especially how faster it could be than VNC (which is what I have been using) on a slow link.

Before I started messing with FreeNX, I started with NoMachine's 30 days eval version of NX Server for Solaris Evaluation trying to get some basic sense of how it works. The package installation was very straightforward and the only thing you would need is the 30 days eval license for the NX server to work (you can get it from here). Following the package installation, I ran:

  # /usr/NX/bin/nxsetup --install solaris
  # /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --start

Not problems so far. Now the NX server had been set up and already running on the system. Then I downloaded the free NX client for Windows from NoMachine and installed it on my Windows box (yeah yeah, I do use Windows, this can be another long discussion). Fired off the NX client and did some configuration then started connecting to the NX server. I was surprised to see that CDE started very fast, and I felt it definitely started faster than VNC running on the same server. Starting up GUI and moving it around was very smooth and responsive, and I could barely feel the delay. It felt like running the CDE locally. I was very happy with the result. But I didn't like the fact that the eval license would expire in 30 days and I knew I wouldn't have money to buy one from NoMachine. So I started looking at the FreeNX option. I downloaded the latest version from FreeNX website and followed the guide to install it. But FreeNX didn't work out of box on Solaris. There are also some commands or command options that are not supported natively on Solaris or some older version of Solaris. After a few hours of tweaking, I finally got FreeNX working on my Solaris 10 box. Here is a screenshot I took:

I did all the tests in my home LAN during the weekend. So you might wonder how fast it could go to connect from my office to the NX server running on a Solaris box in my basement, I wonder too! So first thing I did after I came to my office this morning was install the NoMachine NX Windows client and connect to my home machine running NX server. I was so amazed to see that the speed was much much faster than VNC over the same network link, holy! At that point, I have decided to replaced all the VNC crap on my servers.

Did I mention that 1) the authentication between the NX server and the client is done through SSH (publickey) 2) all the traffic between the NX server and client could be encrypted using SSL? Still not convinced? Just try it out yourself and you will find out. If you want to get FreeNX working on a Solaris box, please stay tuned, I will open another entry tomorrow and talk about that.