Three Step Guide to X11 Forwarding

Got a graphical application you want to run on a Linux box, but display on a Windows box? It’s stupidly easy. I can’t believe how long it took me to learn how to do this, even though I knew it was possible to. Hopefully, this will save some other sysadmin from not having this trick in the toolbox. (It’s particularly useful for running virt-manager when you don’t have a Linux machine to sit in front of.)

Step 1: download and install Xming (probably from Softpedia, since Sourceforge is full of malware and BS misleading downloads now)

Step 2: in PuTTY’s configs on your Windows box, Connection –> SSH –> X11 –> check the “Enable X11 Forwarding” box.

Step 3: SSH into a Linux box, and run a GUI application from the command line. Poof, the app shows up on your Windows desktop!