# Current FreeNX installation info

## NorthWoodsman

What's the current information about installing FreeNX, the howto is out of date, it looks like there's an ebuild but it's masked because everyone gets the same public key by default (which can easily be fixed after you emerge it). If you have any current info, maybe this can be the thread to start a new Howto.

I wasn't sure whether to post this in Desktop or Networking, mods move this if you think I picked the wrong one

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## tscolari

how can this public key be issue be fixed?

I was going to follow the howto, but what would be better, do it or try the portage?

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## jthompson

******LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING POST FOR INFO ON FREENX 0.2.8

I thought I might revive this post.

I know some of the security issues have been fixed.  Freenx uses OpenSSH now.  In bugzilla there are quite a few discussions about it.

Anyway, I suppose I must have gotten lucky, but I got freenx to work without much hassle.  It does not have sound support as far as I know (they are working on it I think), but it is really fast compared to regular old XDMCP.

I have tried it wtih KDE and GNOME on two different machines.  The GNOME machine used gnome-light and it worked all except for one error which related to the XKB extensions.  This error did not seem to affect anything.

Ok, so I started from scratch.  I did not have any previous version of NX installed, commercial or otherwise.

First add the following packages to /etc/portage/package.keywords

```
net-misc/nxserver-freenx

net-misc/nx-x11

net-misc/nxclient

net-misc/nxproxy

```

Wow, I just used cut and paste from my X Desktop into this post using a Windows Laptop with the FreeNX client.  Cool.

And I digress...

After doing so do an

```
emerge -pv nxserver-freenx

```

This will let you see what you need on your machine to install it.

If you are using GNOME, it will install the qt package, apparently this is required.  It no longer uses nx-ssh, it uses openssh, I believe this is different from the commercial NX, and it was made this way by the freenx developers to resolve those security issues you were asking about.

And basically thats it.

I downloaded the NX client from www.nomachine.com and installed it on my laptop.  I ran the connection wizard and WA LA!  It complained the first time about not being able to create a cache, but it said that this might happen if this is the first time you logged on.  So I logged off and logged on again, and the error went away as it had suggested.

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## jthompson

FreeNX 0.2.8 is out.  All of the packages it requires are marked as stable in portage now.  

There is one option that you have to be aware of, when upgrading.  There is a USE flag called commercial for the nxserver-freenx package.  It enables you to use the downloadable client from nomachine's website.  I am not entirely sure what other clients you would use, maybe there is a freenx client for KDE?

So you can now take out the entries pertaining to nx packages in /etc/portage/package.keywords

All I did to upgrade was...

I first unmerged nxclient because I was unaware of the commericial USE flag, however all you should have to do is...

```
USE="commericial" emerge -pv nx-X11 nxserver-freenx
```

This will update you to the current libraries, etc.

Of course take out the -p when you are ready to proceed.

I already had the most current version of nxproxy.

I just upgraded the packages, and everything works without a hitch.  I am currently using the windows NXclient downloadable from no-machine's website.

If  you don't have the commercial USE flag in your /etc/make.conf, portage will complain that the nxclient package blocks nxserver-freenx.

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## jthompson

I suppose you could also create an entry in /etc/portage/package.use

```
=net-misc/nxserver-freenx-0* commercial
```

This would be a better option than putting in it /etc/make.conf

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