10.4.7. Cygwin

Cygwin provides substantial UNIX functionality on MS Windows systems. Apart from providing UNIX command line tools and graphical applications, it can also be used to display a Linux desktop on an MS Windows machine, using remote X. From a Cygwin Bash shell, type the command

/usr/X11R6/bin/XWin.exe -query your_linux_machine_name_or_IP

The connection is by default denied. You need to change the X Display Manager (XDM) configuration and possibly the X Font Server (XFS) configuration to enable this type of connection, where you get a login screen on the remote machine. Depending on your desktop manager (Gnome, KDE, other), you might have to change some configurations there, too.

If you do not need to display the entire desktop, you can use SSH in Cygwin, just like explained in Section 10.4.4. without all the fuss of editing configuration files.