Xming the Xmerciless

For a while now I’ve been looking for an X server for Windows, so that I can start X applications from within a secure shell. Up until now Hummingbird has a been a fair solution, but I’ve never been too impressed with it. I’d never been able to get it working with PuTTY, so I have had to revert to Hummingbird’s mediocre terminal client when I needed to run X apps. And when it’s running it sits in the way on my (already over cluttered) task bar.

But not any more! I’ve found Xming, which is brilliant. It’s hardly new, but it’s new to me, so I’m excited. It works wonderfully with PuTTY. It starts when I log in and runs in the background with nothing but a system tray icon. It does all sorts of other X’y stuff, but all I want from my X server, is for it to stay out the way until needed. Hummingbird didn’t, Xming does. Lovely stuff.