Xming Locks!

Short Story

Starting up the gnome session manager from within a gnome-terminal avoids the annoying "Not Responding" problem that I get when going from Vista to Linux via XMing.

Long Story

Briefly, here is what I did to get it to work:

• Start Xming without access control
• SSH to the Linux system and set DISPLAY
• Start a gnome-terminal
• From within the gnome-terminal, start a gnome-session

Background

This is using XMing 6.9.0.31 to display something from Fedora Core 10 (2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.i686) on Vista Home Permium.

For reasons unknown (anyone here with info, please comment), XMing seems to lock up on Vista frequently. After as little as 10 seconds, the main window stops responding to requests.

I would set up XMing using the configuration that I outlined in a previous post.

Xming after a few seconds

Start Xming without access control

I'm not exactly fond of this, but unfortunately I did not find a way around this. If I do, I will post this info in a followup.

XLaunch dialog

This results in the rather...blank Xming display:

Blank and not very useful

SSH to the Linux system and set DISPLAY

Using putty or whatever, log onto the Linux system. Note that this is using SSH, telnet, but not with something graphical like an xterm.

Next set the X-Windows environment variable, DISPLAY, to point back to the Vista system. I'm sure there's some way of doing this with a script, but I'm too lazy to figure it out.

Setup the DISPLAY variable

Start a gnome-terminal

I expect that xterm or kdeterm or others would do just as well, but my system only seems to have "gnome-terminal." This should result in an unadorned, ugly, terminal appearing on the Vista system:

Note the lack of border and resize.

From within the gnome-terminal, start a gnome-session

Emphasis on from within the gnome-terminal! I've tried doing this from the SSH session and it does not seem to work. Don't ask me why... it's just Linux!

Once again, perhaps this may work using the KDE equivalent, but this is what I use.

After starting up a session, the Xming display changes from the ugly default to something better looking:

Note the window now has a window bar, border and the background has changed.

gnome-session also spouts about a page and a half of scary-looking gibberish. The thing seems to work despite all this.

Conclusion

Using this approach, Xming is much more responsive than with the other approaches I've tried. It is somewhat cryptic, and various steps may not even be necessary. If you find other approaches that work, please post them.