Effiecient Windows to Linux desktop sharing solution that support multiple screens

Question

I am looking for an efficient Windows to Linux desktop sharing software that support multiple screen.

As of now my team develops (mustly Scala) code on our local windows machines (laptops). For various reasons the data we are working on can't usually be copied to our local machines.

Currently we quite frequently need to exports our code/jars to a different environment that is also connected to an Hadoop cluster containing the data.

We are looking for a desktop sharing solution that will enable us to develop and execute code on remote, strong, stable Linux machines, that are connected via broadband connection to our data clusters.

Its crucial for us that the solution above will be able to run remote GUI based developing tools such as IntelliJ on the Linux machines and display them on our local Windows machine multiple screens smoothly.

Any recommendation? Thanks in advance, Mishael

Answer 1

One of the options is to use Cygwin - this will allow you to run UI applications from a remote server on your Windows environment In order to that you should do the following:

A. On Windows side:

Download and install Cygwin/X from : http://x.cygwin.com/ In the Cygwin/X installer make sure the following packages are chosen:

1. xorg-server (required, the Cygwin/X X Server)
2. xinit (required, scripts for starting the X server: xinit, startx, startwin)
3. X-start-menu-icons (optional, adds icons for X Clients to the Start menu)
4. xorg-docs (optional, man pages)
5. font-bh-ttf
6. font-bitstream-vera-ttf

Setup X Launcher Create a new shortcut on your desktop which points to the following (assume your cygwin was installed in c:\software): C:\software\cygwin\bin\run.exe C:\software\cygwin\bin\XWin.exe -multiwindow -clipboard -ac

Double click the shortcut you just created :) this will start small icon on the left side of windows taskbar.

B. On Linux side

login to your remote server for the same windows machine (use any terminal - e.g Putty) set the DISPLAY parameter your server:

export DISPLAY=<windows-host-name>:0.0

now you can run any application that requires GUI and it will open up on your windows machine :)