Login to Solaris desktop from Windows using Cygwin
Cygwin is a great tool for UNIX people stuck in a Windows world as it provides a vast assortment of UNIX tools in a Windows command prompt. One of the most powerful uses of Cygwin is as an X server. While it may be useful occasionally to run a single X application in its own window, that can be boring. As a more exciting option, it is simple (one command!) to launch a full Solaris desktop session complete with login screen.
Solaris is already setup to allow remote X logins, so no work there. On your Windows box, install Cygwin (if you haven’t already), open a Cygwin prompt and type:
X -broadcast
You should see the login screen of the Sun host (as long as it is on the same subnet). Enjoy!








MH said on October 14, 2010
During the installation it gets to the step where you select the download site and doesn’t find any.
Gsdg said on October 29, 2010
this info is near useless – it doesn’t even tell you to initiated an SSH connection witht the remote host…
Guest said on January 28, 2011
I was able to install cygwin, and did the
Xwin -query 999.999.999.999 and i get a big black window
is there a need to ssh or something before?
because i haven’t even logged into the sun machine