# NXServer License

## orlanz

I noticed the nxserver-[personal, enterprise, business] ebuilds listed in portage.  I haven't emerged it yet, but would like to.  I looked at the license, and am a bit confused.  The license is nomachines.  And unless I totally misunderstood, it seemed to me that it shouldn't be avaliable for normal emerging (the server, not the client).

Does the package fall under nomachine's 30-day evaluation period and/or does gentoo have special written permission to redistribute?  If so, I think it should be stated as part of the description.

Also, will portage tell me about such cases after it installs?

I am sorry if this is a dumb question, I been sick all week so I am a little off  :Shocked: .  If it is, I ask for your forgiveness.

Thx.

PS. Almost forgot.  I noticed that emerge wants to pull down nxssh too, will this interfere with my normal ssh in anyway or is it something that works w/ it?

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## CheshireCat

I believe that you need to get a license file from nomachine for these to work.  They are all freely available for download from the nomachine site, which is what the ebuilds do anyways, so I don't see a problem there.  I played around with the open-source components a bit, and never really got anything useful out of them.  I get satisfactory performance from tightvnc, or X11 w/ dxpc compressing proxy.

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## orlanz

Yeah, I use tightvnc too, but lately (ever since upgrading to 2.6.0 and 2.6.1) I noticed times when the screen doesn't refresh for a second or two (sometimes more) on my LAN.  Also, noticed streaming video sometimes gets laggy (but not as often).  I think I might have missed compiling some feature into the 2.6 kernel that I did in 2.4 or maybe I need to recompile something... not really sure.

Anyway I wanted to test other apps, and though it would be a great time to check out nxserve to see if it got affected too.  I am about to try realvnc.

I guess I will go for the 30-day trial on nx.  Thx.

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## CheshireCat

Yikes.  I'm not sure anything will work too well for pushing video around a LAN, even a nice, fast one.  Probably the best performance/quality there will be to stream the to the system you'll be viewing it on, and decompress it there, unless that system is underpowered.

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## orlanz

My network has a 350 MHz P2 gentoo and 1GHz P3 Windows XP connected through a router and its all a 100Mbit, and video streaming works better than I had expected.

I use the gentoo as a 24/7 remote server/desktop/data center type thing.  The router lets only the gentoo touch the WAN while the Windows is entirely protected.  TightVNC is for desktop use from anywhere.  And samba is used to access the gigs of video data and other junk I collected over the years.

The Windows is a on_when_needed school work and entertainment area.  I use it only as a desktop machine, play games, and watch junk.  So I stream the data from Linux using samba, and access the desktop through TightVNC.

The problem is, lately I noticed periods of data loss when accessing the gentoo.  Currently I am testing using different apps (the whole nx thing comes from here) to see if the only variable is the kernel.  I haven't tested outside the LAN, but I don't think that's too important.  I am almost done testing the 2.6 kernel, and will switch back to 2.4 to test that and see if there is a difference.

Again, sorry for misleading you.  I didn't mean to.

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## CheshireCat

No worries.  I just didn't know that that would work at all, honestly, although it sounds like you were surprised by how well it works yourself.  I only use VNC when I'm not at home, so I don't have a lot of experience with it over a LAN, but I didn't think that it would work well for video.

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## Carlo

Have a look at /usr/portage/licenses/, if you're unsure about a particular license.

Carlo

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## orlanz

Ok, I tested both kernels and well, the skipping and packet loss is in both.

Although the 2.4 has less data loss than the 2.6, I don't think it is enough to say the kernel is at fault.

Hummm, I am currently using the tulip drivers.  I will mess around w/ its options in the kernel config to see if there is a difference.  Anyone know if the experimental option is ok to touch or should I not even look at it?

I wish I could remember what else I did while switching to 2.6 that might have caused this (I didn't notice the problem before switching).

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## tdeutsch

 *orlanz wrote:*   

> I noticed the nxserver-[personal, enterprise, business] ebuilds listed in portage.  I haven't emerged it yet, but would like to.  I looked at the license, and am a bit confused.  The license is nomachines.  And unless I totally misunderstood, it seemed to me that it shouldn't be avaliable for normal emerging (the server, not the client).

 

Short answer: The -freenx ist for normal emerging. It based on a OpenSource Project which uses the free nx-libs from nomachine. The other three (this you have listet above) are the "commercial"ones from nomachine itself. They needed an license which can be buyed at nomachine.com (as I know....)

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