What is a good and free X Server for Windows

Question

What is a good and free X Server for Windows?

• Cygwin - I've had various issues and install problems with this in the past
• Xceed - The employer won't pay for the license.

• Putty - Amazing for telnet and SSH, but I actually need an XServer.

  Are there other good and free alternatives?

Answer 1

I use XMing (with the XMing-fonts collection). And I've never had anything to complain about.

@Jason Baker - While virtualization is quite nice, a Windows X server can treat forwarded windows like any another window that you can alt-tab between and minimize.

Answer 2

Do you really need an X server? Otherwise NoMachine NX might be a good alternative. You won't have the benefit of alt-tabbing between windows though.

Answer 3

In the past I used XMing, but recently I tried andLinux. It's really great for a seamless Linux integration in Windows!

From the andLinux-Site:

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista; 32-bit versions only). This project was started for Dynamism for the GP2X community, but its userbase far exceeds its original design.

andLinux uses coLinux as its core which is confusing for many people. coLinux is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. Although this technology is a bit like running Linux in a virtual machine, coLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient. Xming is used as X server and PulseAudio as sound server.

Answer 4

use Xming together with Putty.. set putty to enable X11 and be sure to have Xming server running.. you should be able to load X11 apps from putty no problem!