Remote X session vs VNC

[UnaClocker]

Which is better? Anyone know the differences well enough to be able to compare/contrast the two options? I know one of them is more resource intensive than the other. I've got a remote X session working great on my LAN with the plug now. I fire up X11 on my OSX machine, and ran xterm, typed xhost + sheevaplugip  and then ssh'd into the plug and typed export DISPLAY=osxmachineip:0.0
Now when I run X apps from the ssh session, they appear on my screen on the OSX computer.. Lovin it..

[gunnarhx]

I am using X over ssh as well = great. I use linux or MS Win(Xming package + putty) on my workstation.
Do you really need to do all that xhost/export  stuff? As long as you've got xauth installed on your plug and made sure your ssh client and server forwards X, you should only need to ssh into plug and launch the X apps.
Make sure you've installed xbase-clients package:
$ apt-get install xbase-clients


If I were to use anything else, I'd try NX over VNC; so much nicer and it runs also over SSH tunnel.
I saw the below link, but I haven't tried it
http://computingplugs.com/index.php/Installing_FreeNX_server_and_NX_Open_Source_Components

Since NX visualizes a whole desktop session, it will be more resource intensive. Therefore I am happy with just X/ssh.
Also, it allows me to explore some nice ncurses based apps for lean and mean computing, for instance screen/rTorrent client etc.
I use NX all the time between more powerful machines and the one thing that is really nice is that you can resume desktop sessions, which is an advantage over x/ssh.

[kveroneau]

I know this topic is dead, but the more efficent way of starting a X application remotely through SSH would be:

Code:

ssh -Y kveroneau@plug xterm

If using Debian or Ubuntu, be sure this is added to your /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

Code:

X11Forwarding yes

To use X forwarding on a Windows machine, you can download xwinlogon:
http://www.calcmaster.net/visual-c++/xwinlogon/

This package contains both the X server and SSH client with a tiny Cgywin system.

You could also install xrdp for example to connect to the plug using any RDP client.  RDP can resume sessions just like NX and VNC do:
http://xrdp.sourceforge.net/

You can even use xrdp to create a forwarding server.  For example, in your SOHO, forward the RDP port to xrdp.  When a user from outside the network connects to xrdp, they have a choice of what internal PC to connect to.  Connection types, include both RDP and VNC servers.  This would be a really easy and cost effective way to create a simple remote dial-in type VPN set-up for clients and workers to use.  It's a lot more simpler than using SSH to forward ports around your internal network and RDP has native encryption as well.