Yesterday I was in a search for a free (as in beer or as in freedom) X-Window Client to access a Solaris server on my workplace.

I had previously used WRQ Reflection to do this, so I though somebody on the open source community would have found out how to make a free version out of this, taking into account that X-Window belongs to that open community. I didn't find it yesterday so I kind of give up on it.

The funny thing is that today, while I was reading Download Squad on Google Reader, I came accross this article, that shows an application named Xming that seem to do exactly what I was looking for. It's kind of confusing that it's called a server, when in fact what you are going to do is using it like a client, but there should be a reason for that.

So, I went to XMing Website and downloaded the core package and installed it on my PC. After installing it, it's autolaunched and appear as an icon on the tray. I also installed the fonts package, just in case it's needed.

Then, I started putty to the solaris machine with my user and password, and assign my IP to the DISPLAY environmental variable like this:

export DISPLAY=10.1.2.3:0.0

After that, I started xterm from the shell, but it failed printing out the following error:

Xlib: connection to "10.1.2.3:0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

application-specific initialization failed: couldn't connect to display "10.1.2.3:0.0"

After searching through the web, it seemed like a problem of authorization, something to do with xauth and permissions of XMing that I'm not related with. I closed the XMing server, and started from the run prompt adding the -ac switch after the command. About this, there's this note on the website: -ac is unsafe on public networks, but makes things easier for beginners on private ones, so be careful using it.

After that, I tried again and succeded. Right now I have an X-Window Server on my Windows system, without having to pay anything for it.

Thanks Xming team!