NoMachine – Download, Install and Use For NX, SSH Connections

NoMachine is a remote desktop tool that provides high performance and speed. NoMachine is mainly designed for Linux distributions but in order to make a remote desktop connection and remote management easier, it is also provided by macOS and Windows operating systems. NoMachine provides the freedom to work the employees from anywhere.

NoMachine Features

There are a lot of features which makes NoMachine very popular and preferred remote desktop tool. Here we will provide these features.

• NoMachine is cross-platform where operating systems and devices like Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, RaspberryPi, Android is supported
• Provides faster and quality remote desktop experience according to the open-source protocol VNC
• Provides centralized remote access management which makes it useful for enterprise environments.
• Installation, configuration, and management are very easy according to other alternatives.
• Provides policy-based access which can be set user level, location, network.
• It is fully secured with the OpenSSL, TLS, AES 128, and SSH tunneling.
• Screen sharing with others makes it easier to collaborate.
• Web-based client and access is very useful where we can access to NoMachine servers just with a browser.
• Remote printing is another good feature.
• File transfer features will make collaboration straightforward and eliminate to file servers and trivial tasks.
• A remote desktop session recording can be done easily and can be turned into a video conference.

Download and Install For Windows

NoMachine can be downloaded for 32 and 64 bit Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019. Following link redirect to download page. The installation will require about 130 MB disk space.

https://www.nomachine.com/download/download&id=8

Open and start the installation file named nomachine_6.7.6_7.exe

We need to provide Administrative rights with the following User Account Control and click Yes.

We will see the following Welcome Screen and click to Next.

In the following screen, we will the License Agreement by accepting we will continue.

We will select the installation path which is C:\Program Files\ NoMachine

We can see the following screen during installation

After the installation is complete we can see the following screen which will update some operating system component and take some time.

When the NoMachine installation is complete successfully we will see the following screen.

We have to restart the system in order to use NoMachine properly.

Download and Install For Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Kali

We can download the Linux setup files from the following link. For Linux, NoMachine is provided as RPM,DEB,TAR.GZ. We will use deb for Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Kali installation. 32 and 64 bit is provided with different setup files so we will select 64 bit for this tutorial.

https://www.nomachine.com/download/linux&id=1

We will be redirected to the following URL and web page.

https://www.nomachine.com/download/download&id=6

Then we will navigate to the directory where we downloaded the NoMachine deb installer. In this case it is downloaded into Downloads

$ cd Downloads

$ sudo dpkg -i nomachine_6.7.6_11_amd64.deb

We can see from the output that the TCP 4000 port listening for coming NX remote desktop connection.

NoMachine Main Screen

The main screen is like below for the NoMachine. It is very clear where recent connections, create a new connection and settings buttons are shown.

Edit Preferences

We can edit preferences and then click to the Settings on the right upper corner. This will open connection preferences screen which provides configuration for Input , Appearance , Transfers , Folders , Privacy .

Input Preferences

We can change the preferences of the Input. We can specify the following configuration.

• Show remote cursor pointer
• Emulate middle mouse button
• Grab the keyboard input
• Grab the mouse input
• Use hot-key for menu access
• Show the menu panel covering all-screen

Appearance Preferences

We can configure the appearance of the NoMachine with the Appearance preferences.

• Style
• Wave
• Text
• Default
• Fixed

Transfer Preferences

We can set the following transfer preferences from this screen.

• Allow others to send you a file
• Automatically save the received files
• Disallow files bigger than

Folders Preferences

In this screen, we can set the following Folder Preferences.

• Connections and recordings
• Transferred files
• Program files
• Player settings

Privacy Preferences

In this screen, we can set the following Privacy Preferences.

• Don't delete log files on exit
• Don't save connection screenshots
• `Don’t show other computers on the network`

Create Connection

After the installation is complete an icon will be shown on the menu like below. We will click right on this icon which will show a menu like below. From here we will click New Connection. New Connection is used to store connection configuration and profile. The new connection creation will work both on Linux and Windows.

Specify Protocol

We will see a screen like below which is the first step of new connection creation. In this step, we will specify the connection protocol which will be NX. We can also select SSH to ssh into the remote system.

Set Hostname IP Address, Port

In this step, we will set the IP address or hostname with the port. We can also enable the Use UDP communication for multimedia data which will make communication faster.

Specify Authentication Method

In the following screen can specify the authentication method which can be Password, Private Key , Kerberos.

Proxy Configuration

If we need some proxy in order to access the internet or other networks we can specify the proxy here.

Set Connection Name and Save

In this part, we will set the connection name and then click to the Done in order to save the configured connection with the specified name.

Connect Remote System

We can start the connection by just clicking the connection we want to start like below.

If we are connecting for the first time to the remote system we will be asked for verification. We have to very and accept the remote system fingerprint just by clicking Yes.

We will see the following authentication screen where we will provide a username and password for authenticating the remote system. We can also save the password for the future connection by ticking Save this password in the connection file.

If this is the first connection we will be provided some information about NoMachine usage like below. We can forward by clicking OK. We can also disable this introduction by ticking Don't show this message again.

Then we will see the following screen which is the remote system desktop which is a Windows 7 in this example.