Installing an X server under Windows

It is possible to install an X server under Windows in order to use X-Windows applications (Gnome, KDE, etc..through an SSH connection).

• The following method does not make use Cygwin. In the example below, our Windows PC (on which X server is installed) has the IP:10.0.0.1
• Linux SSH server on which you will connect has the following IP:10.0.0.2

1. Install X-Ming

• Download and install Xming
• For example, take Xming-6-9-0-24-setup.exe .
• Also install an SSH client such as Putty.
• Start Xming: click on the X in the taskbar:

2. Open your SSH connection

• Launch putty.
• Configuration:
• Enable X11 forwarding: "Connexion" > "SSH" > "X11" > check "Enable X11 forwarding"

• To properly manage the function keys, go to "Terminal"> "Keyboard"> select "Linux".

• And finally to display accented characters correctly in the terminal, go to "Windows"> "Translation"> and select "UTF-8"

• Go back to "Session" and enter the address of the ssh server.

You can (if you want) enter a session name and click "Save" to save these settings. 
(Simply double-click the session name to start the session.)

3. Launch applications!

Once connected, you can run graphical applications. 


For example: 
gedit & 
firefox & 
gnome-terminal & 
xterm & 
For example, here Synaptic and Firefox launched on Linux (10.0.0.2) and displaying their windows in the X server of Windows (10.0.0.1) through SSH: 

Notes

Potential issues

If the graphics windows are not displayed, check that X11Forwarding is set to "yes" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restart your SSH server (sudo /etc/init.d/sshd restart) 
If the command window gives you a message like: 

Xlib: connection to "localhost:10.0" refused by server 
Xlib: PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attempted 
when you try to run a GUI application, it simply means that a user is already logged in and using a X session. 

Have the full desktop

If you want to have access a complete desktop (not only windows applications), you have several options:

• XNest/gdmflexiserver
• NX Server.
• gnome-session

For gdmflexiserver, simply type in your the following command in the ssh console: gdmflexiserver -n 
A new window will open and you can login with your username/password and receive a full graphical environment (desktop, wallpaper, icons, menu bars ...)