Re: OT: Google Groups Test (please ignore)
nebulous99@gmail.com wrote:
I think you may be confused here.
Not at all. I speak from extensive personal experience using SSH for binary
connections, including full graphical user interface action.
SSH is basically encrypted telnet. You get a unix shell prompt, in
text mode, at the remote end and can run commands on the host. Console
apps only. SSH being 8-bit safe means you can potentially use full
unicode -- how nice. But there's still a world of difference between
SSH and a remote desktop. One is a remote textual shell; the other a
remote graphical shell. You will need the latter to remotely run a GUI
app and see and manipulate its GUI at the client side. (SSH might let
you launch it, but it would then present its UI on the server, which
means you'd have to wait till you got home to actually see it or click
on anything or give it focus and type into it.)
Exactly what I get with SSH and X forwarding.
X Windows events are delivered right to my remote login location, giving me a
full graphic interface into the programs on my home machine.
So I can use Thunderbird, Firefox, NetBeans, graphical emacs, GIMP, or
whatever, with full GUI capabilities over SSH.
I also tunnel database connections and other such over SSH. So I can have my
remote node pretend that it's connecting to a database on localhost when it's
actually over a secure connection to my SSH server.
It is most emphatically not a mere text session.
--
Lew