Xming for Microsoft Windows

Overview

Xming provides a minimalist X windows server for use on Microsoft Windows. Using Xming with an SSH client program lets you run applications on UNIX hosts (e.g., Strauss) but have the graphical display, keyboard, and mouse managed by your PC. This is useful for many mathematical, statistical, and engineering applications (e.g., Matlab, SAS, GAMBIT).

This document describes how to download and install Xming and to configure SSH to use X11-tunneling. Several open-source SSH clients will work (e.g., puTTY SSH, Cygwin's OpenSSH), but only ssh.com's Secure Shell client is fully supported at the University of Delaware.

Downloading and Installing the Software

SSH client prerequisite

UD's supported SSH Secure Shell client can be downloaded from the University's UDeploy site. The IT Support Center help pages contain a general link for SSH.

Xming installation

Use the Installing Xming X11 on Windows document, written by Penn State's Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure group to download and install Xming.

Important: Follow the Penn State instructions but take note of the following:

  1. Observe their recommended choices.
  2. In their Select Components step, be sure to leave the puTTY choices unchecked.
  3. Install the Xming-fonts component as directed.
  4. In the Configure X11 Forwarding in SSH Clients section, only do the ssh.com Secure Shell Client configuration.

Using Xming and SSH on Strauss

  1. Start Xming on your PC.
  2. Connect to strauss using SSH.
  3. Type the UNIX command (e.g., xterm, gnuplot, xmaple) that starts an X11 application in the SSH window.