open gui on a windows10 machine from debian over ssh

[john bean]

hi i have ssh server installed on windows 10 machine and can log into it via ssh but cant open a gui application from the remote linux machine it does launch if i go to the cmd on windows 10 run the command and it opens but when i log in remotely and run the command nothing happens and i get no output allso "ls directory" does not list contents of directorys". I have not used windows in over 10 years and can find no info about it does anyone know how to launch a gui app on windows 10 over ssh.

kind regards buill

sorry if this is in wrong section

[Peter Rooke]

It's been a while, but often the easiest way is to run a Putty client on the local (windows) machine and then configure it to do the X forwarding.  
X is the native window service that runs on most Linux machines.

Here are two guides;    
How to forward X using PuTTy
PuTTy docs - X forwarding

You will also need some sort of X emulator installed on your Windows machine, Xming is one that I know of.  

[Tim Holloway]

Windows does not have an X client, unlike Unix/Linux. So you cannot simply ssh in. In fact, until about Windows 10, Windows didn't even support ssh itself and PuTTY was an essential.

What Windows does have is Remote Desktop support and VNC. I'm not up to date on VNC on Windows - though I'm pretty sure it's a third-party installed app, but Remote Desktop I think is either part of the core kit or at least the second-tier Microsoft installables.

There are several Linux Remote Desktop clients (Note that unlike X, the server is the remote machine for RDP, not the client). Unfortunately, my favorite Linux rdp app no longer works well with the more secure Windows versions. I think Reminna is the recommended app these days.

Note also that unlike Linux, Windows is fundamentally a single-user OS, so as a rule, to attach a remote client (Windows or Linux) to a Windows machine the GUI desktop gets stolen from the target machine - it cannot be shared between the local Windows user and the remote connection. That's why Citrix exists - true multi-user Windows. But Windows apps have to be designed specifically for Citrix - the normal Windows coding won't automatically adapt.