NoMachine

NoMachine, the company, first launched its legacy NX Server software in 2003. The core compression technology was released under a GPL license. In 2010, according to an article on Slashdot the company decided to close the source and a proprietary license was adopted.[1] It's still popular within the Linux community with many Linux distributions providing installation instructions and guidelines on their own websites.[2]

In 2013, NoMachine for Windows and Mac was released which targeted users of remote Windows and Mac hosts and garnered positive reviews in the Technology Communities.[3] It was in 2013 that NX software became NoMachine software.

In 2015, Microsoft publicly announced that it would be collaborating with NoMachine to extend its initial port of OpenSSH for Windows.[4] The final code was released towards the end of 2015 for community scrutiny.[5]

The software now uses a combination of video and image encoding, based on standard codecs and a number of techniques developed by NoMachine. GPU-accelerated H.264 encoding/decoding is also available. Its Linux Terminal Server products uses NoMachine's X11 Vector Graphics mode, a proprietary method which uses a combination of different techniques to encode each element of the screen in the most convenient way.

The X11 vector graphics mode is a server side configuration available since v. 4.2.15 in all of the NoMachine products that support the virtual desktop functionality. With this mode, NoMachine proxies and compresses the X11 protocol by the same methods of the NX protocol in version 3. This can reduce bandwidth usage and the hardware requirements on both the client and the server by-passing the expensive video encoding and decoding operations. The X11 vector graphics mode is useful for avoiding loss of image quality and in general is the most suitable option when connecting to traditional GUIs or a large amount of text. However it's not suggested for multimedia contents or applications with many graphical effects.

NoMachine also utilizes VirtualGL [6] libraries to run high-end OpenGL-based X applications.[7] This allows OpenGL applications, namely 3D applications, to use server side graphics hardware.

The combination of encoding methods with supported technologies suits remote computing scenarios in a number of industries: Manufacturing, Science [8] & Research,[9] Education and VFX.[10]

The availability of features is dependent upon the product from the available ranges. Some of the features possible:

• Remote access for multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, etc.)
• Bidirectional file transfer
• Multimedia streaming
• Bidirectional printing
• Unattended access
• Session recording
• Auto-Discovery of NoMachine clients on LAN
• USB redirection
• Two-Factor-Authentication
• Browser-based remote access

NoMachine, or NX as it is often referred to since the release of version 4, is platform-agnostic. It can be installed on Linux, Windows and Mac instances virtualised within popular hypervisors like Xen, KVM or VMware, and integrated with any virtual desktop infrastructure running in private or public clouds, such as Amazon EC2 or Rackspace.

• Official website