Recently, I've purchased a second hand Pentium 4 PC to play around with Linux. I had used Linux a little back in 1994 till 1996 when I was in college, but never really touched it again since. Once installed, I wanted to access this PC through remote desktop so I don't need a dedicated screen or a KVM switch to use it. Just a PC connected to the LAN. 

I installed Ubuntu Desktop 7.10 and SSH was activated by default. I have the PuTTy client installed on my Windows PC and could immediately connect to the Linux box. But this is only console access, not desktop access.

Through Google I came to NoMachine NX product range. Next to remote desktop, it seems that their products are also more Citrix-like solutions but I haven't investigated in detail since that was not what I was looking for. They have a free edition that allows for two concurrent connections. The reviews I found were very positive, so I decided to give it a try.

Installation was very easy. The NX free edition exists of 3 packages, client, node and server, which have to be installed in this order. I choose the Debian packages (deb) as I'm running Ubuntu. On downloading, FireFox immediately proposed to open the downloaded .deb file with the GDebi Package Installer, making installation as easy as can be.

On my Windows PC, I installed the NX client. This is a classical install, nothing special. When I tried to connect to the Linux box, it worked immediately. I didn't have to change anything in the config of the NXserver for it to work. Great! The only thing I had to change was the keyboard layout. It looks at the settings of X windows rather than Gnome.

There is only one strange behaviour. I have to switch the numlock off on my Windows PC for it to work through the NXclient on Ubuntu. In a message from 2004, NoMachine announced version 1.3.1 which resolves a “NumLock and cursor keys mix-up” bug, but apparently it re-appeared 4 years later in the version 3.1.0 I installed.