NoMachine NX 3.0 improves remote access to Linux boxes

Hmmm ... no mention of the FreeNX project at all in an article at Linux.com ... weird

That's possibly because FreeNX doesn't support NoMachine's NX 3.0 protocol (yet).

FreeNX appears to be all but abandoned. They have not kept up with NoMachine's releases in at least a couple of years. The server and client version have to match and FreeNX simply has not kept up, or even indicated that they want to. NoMachine does not make older client versions available, so you have to scrounge around to find a matching client for your FreeNX server.

FreeNX has never worked that well anyway. I've tested it extensively over a long period of time, and as much as I want to like it, I steer customers to VNC. There are many excellent VNC-based applications for all platforms and purposes, and it's rock-solid and reliable. Can't say that about FreeNX.

For folks who are not familiar with FreeNX and NoMachine, NoMachine is a commercial company that sell the closed, proprietary NX server and client. These are for running secure remote graphical desktops. They've come up with some clever tweaks to deliver very good performance even over slow network links, and they use SSL for encrypting traffic. If you don't mind an expensive proprietary product, NoMachine is quite good.

FreeNX (GPL) is supposed to replace the NoMachine server, so you still need the free-beer NoMachine client. It's for running remote Linux desktops from Windows, Solaris, and other Linuxes. I really want to like FreeNX, and it has a devoted following. But it has too many problems and unresponsive devs.

Quoting:FreeNX has never worked that well anyway.

My experiences differ. I've used FreeNX for nearly two years now to remote administer a few machines and it works quite well so far. And, as you said, it's fast even over a slow line. That's a huge boon.