Coherence for Linux?

[janstett]

I spend most of my time with Windows XP and coherence is great and getting better.

However, I do spend some time with Linux (Fedora Core 7) and some sort of Coherence mode for Linux would be awesome (perhaps a direct tunnel to X on OSX?).

So, question 1, is this feasible to ask for?

Question 2, is it planned?

 

[hotblack]

It is something that would be cool. But they need to sort out the core bugs with even running and installing common Linux distros and kernels before adding new features.

 

[jruschme]

It seems like you should be able to do this already for X windows applications by using a rootless X server. Something like this:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2001/08/14/mac_dev.html

This is an old article, but should be a start for further googling.

John

 

[itsdapead]

some sort of Coherence mode for Linux would be awesome (perhaps a direct tunnel to X on OSX?).

You can do this already -
1. Ensure that you can ssh into your linux VM from the mac, and that X11 forwarding is enabled in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf under Linux

2. Start Apple X11 (its an optional package on the OSX install disc)

3. In the X terminal window type:
ssh -X yourusername@10.211.55.3
(where 10.211.55.3 is the IP address of your VM)

3. At the linux prompt, start up any X-based program:
e.g.
[yourusername@fedora ]$ oowriter &

4. Voila...

Mind you, I've only managed to get this to work for stand-alone programs launched from the CLI, and re-configuring a "modern" Linux desktop environment to play nicely with a rootless X server is non-trivial - and modern eye-candy-loaded Linux apps run rather sluggishly. I've also hit issues with Gnome and sound - if you try to start a session on an X server it also tries to re-direct the sound over the network (there is an OSX version of the sound daemon but it doesn't work for me and appears to be abandonware) and this behaviour seems to be hard-coded into Gnome :-(

(Using a ssh tunnel is an overkill here, where there would be no security risk to using straight TCP?IP - its just the easiest way to make it happen without faffing around with X authentication and enabling incoming TCP/IP in Apple X11).

However - all this is generic Linux/X11 stuff which could be fixed up by "the community" and would have uses far beyond parallels. As another poster said, there are more urgent Parallels-specific Linux issues to be fixed first.