10.4.3.2. Telnet and X

If you would want to use telnet to display graphical applications running on a remote machine, you first need to give the remote machine access to your display (to your X server!) using the xhost command, by typing a command similar to the one below in a terminal window on your local machine:

davy:~> xhost +remote.machine.com

After that, connect to the remote host and tell it to display graphics on the local machine by setting the environment variable DISPLAY:

[davy@remote ~] export DISPLAY="local.host.com:0.0"

After completing this step, any application started in this terminal window will be displayed on your local desktop, using remote resources for computing, but your local graphical resources (your X server) for displaying the application.

This procedure assumes that you have some sort of X server (XFree86, X.org, Exceed, Cygwin) already set up on the machine where you want to display images. The architecture and operating system of the client machine are not important as long as they allow you to run an X server on it.

Mind that displaying a terminal window from the remote machine is also considered to be a display of an image.