Google releases open source NX server
- 13 July, 2009 11:48
- Comments 7
Amid the fanfare of last week's Chrome OS announcement, Google quietly released an open source NX server, dubbed Neatx, for remote desktop display.
NX technology was developed by NoMachine to handle remote X Window connections and make a graphical desktop display usable over the Internet.
By its own admission, Google has been looking at remote desktop technologies for “quite a while” and decided to develop Neatx as existing NX server products are either proprietary or difficult to maintain.
“The good old X Window system can be used over the network, but it has issues with network latency and bandwidth. Neatx remedies some of these issues,” Google engineers wrote on the company's open source blog.
NoMachine had released parts of the source code to its NX product under the GPL, but the NX server remained proprietary.
There is a free implementation of an NX server based on NoMachine's libraries named FreeNX, but this did not appeal to Google.
“FreeNX's primary target is to replace the one closed component and is written in a mix of several thousand lines of Bash, Expect and C, making FreeNX difficult to maintain,” according to Google.
“Designed from scratch with flexibility and maintainability in mind, Neatx minimizes the number of involved processes and all code is split into several libraries.”
Neatx is written in Python, with a few wrapper scripts in Bash and one program written in C “for performance reasons”.
“Neatx was also able to reuse some code from another Google open source project, Ganeti. The code still has some issues, but we're confident interested developers will be able to fix them.”
Google also claims Neatx implements features not found in FreeNX, like a drop-down menu for session control in rootless sessions. However, not all of FreeNX's features are implemented in Neatx.
There has already been some speculation that Neatx will be the default display server for the upcoming Chrome OS. Google insists the release date was just a coincidence.
Neatx features include session creation, suspension, resumption, and shutdown; support for Gnome, KDE, application, and console sessions; floating window/virtual desktop sessions; full screen, resolution, and keyboard preferences; and session shadowing (only sessions belonging to you).
Features not supported yet include terminating a session from the session list; Windows/VNC sessions; and sound, printer and Samba tunneling.
Neatx can be downloaded from Google's code repository.
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Comments
Anonymous
1
nxclient for G1 phone
I've looked without success for an NX client for the G1 phone.
Apparently there's some android development work on this, but
now I'm hoping it will be easily available. NX is great!
mangoo
2
will it kill Nomachine NX as a company?
I wonder if it'll kill Nomachine NX as a company?
Anonymous
3
FreeNX has been around for quite some time and that hasn't killed NoMachine off. However, Google being involved may create more OpenSource developer interest in NX and perhaps someone will create a good Windows NX Server, Windows NX Client and better management tools. If Google rallies that much developer support it could mean an end to NoMachine.
Anonymous
4
Already...
There already is a windows client as well as mac and linux. The easiest one to use is the web companion which is java and all you need is a browser with a jvm (sun, apple and ms all work). The management tools are already there in NX and are quite nice. No server for windows but NX speaks RDP so just use a linux server as the proxy. All of this applies to FreeNX as well accept for the management tools. Then again I like command line so I find the tools perfectly adequate in FreeNX.
mike howard
5
nomachine-nx might preempt, giving two steps forward
Nomachine could preempt, giving two steps forward - releasing their own open source improvements, perhaps right into the same projects, and later release additional components, which they continue to earn income from. It might be a better gamble for them.
Anonymous
6
Google is NOT a company I am fond of... I mean they are a VERY big company now and really... TOO BIG for their own good!
Google has become known as a 'spy-happy' company by the intelligent, computer literate and know that Google is one company to stay AWAY from, Free or Not!
They have hired individuals who make their living as a spy in governmental agencies and the likes to help them in their efforts of spying on us.
In fact, that is what their Google toolbar is all about! It digs in to your info on your computer and tracks just about everything you do online. Google also NEVER DELETES ANYTHING anymore and keeps all data they ever collect on you or anyone.
CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT KIND OF POWER GOOGLE WILL HAVE WHEN MANY FOLKS DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL THEIR Operating System????!!!
WOW!!!
People... come on... DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!! As my father always told me as a kid, THINK before your act!!!
Now-a-days, I think, research and then act accordingly.
If you need to respond to something immediately, go with your gut feeling, but make sure you are reading it correctly by practising using it on all your decisions.
Google CHURNS MY guts!!!
Good Luck in whatever you choose to do!!
Betclic
7
Interesting, thanks.