X-Win32 Features

The Many Advantages of LIVE Sessions

X-Win32 is the only PC X server to offer sessions that can be recovered after a Windows, power or network crash.

Whenever a Windows computer loses it connection to a remote Linux or Unix host -- due to a Windows crash, network or power glitch – the remote session dies. Even if no data was lost, it usually takes considerable time to bring the sessions back to where they were just before the crash.

By running a LIVE session, users protect themselves against such frustrations. Now, when something goes wrong, you simply reconnect to the session as X-Win32’s LIVE Server component keeps the session running when it receives a disconnect signal from the PC.

Suspend-Resume

LIVE sessions also offer the ability for the user to manually suspend and resume them. At some later point, simply re-launch the session and you’ll be back where you left off.  If the session was collecting data or running some kind of process, like a simulation, those processes continue to run while the session is suspended on the PC.  You can thus start a job, suspend it, and resume it later to get the results. This takes a lot of traffic off the network, and frees up your desktop for other tasks.

LIVE Sessions can be started on one Windows computer and resumed on another.  This can be done in several ways:

• Set up an identical session on the second computer. Suspend the session on the first machine, then resume the session on the second computer.
• Use X-Win32 Flash, which lets you run X-Win32 from a USB flash drive. So you can suspend the session, move the USB key to the second PC and resume the session.

Fast over Slow Internet Connections

Running a full Unix/Linux desktop over an Internet connection, even at DSL or Cable speed is not feasible as the operation would be unacceptably slow. LIVE sessions cut the X11 round-trips and also add compression/decompression of the XWindows traffic. As a result, LIVE sessions allow you to run a remote Linux or Unix desktop at LAN-like speed over most Internet connections. Even over a 56K or slow modem, you can achieve reasonable performance.