Summary
running xserver applications for X11 forwarding machines from Linux/Mac hosts to Windows
Environment
Windows connecting to Mac and Linux
Directions
MobaXterm
MobaXterm is a nicely integrated product that combines the SSH client, X server, and SFTP client into one easy-to-get-started and easy-to-use application. It is free for personal use and can be downloaded from here. (Note that MobaXterm apparently uses Cygwin/X and PuTTY under the covers.)
Other X servers
Free or inexpensive options are:
- VcXsrv (free). Windows X-server based on the xorg git sources (like xming or cygwin's xwin), but compiled with Visual C++ 2012 Express Edition.
- Cygwin/X (free).
- Xming (free or donation-ware). An older version of Xming is available for free, but access to the latest version requires a small donation (about $20 is recommended). Note that the access (including updates) is limited to one year only, although the right to use is apparently perpetual. The license is granted to individual users, not institutions, but an Academic Site License is available. (IANAL statement: Even if you donate, it may not be legal to use your license on a university-owned machine, i.e., a machine that you do not personally own. To be safe, you should probably stick with the Public Domain release.)
There are a number of commercial X servers, some of which are very good, but they tend to be priced at about $70 and up. A sampling:
External resources