There are many types of remote desktop software.  Some methods I like of graphical remote logins:

  • Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP): allows Windows → Windows, Linux → Windows as well as Windows → Linux or Linux → Linux (last one uncommon).
    Included with Windows.
    For Linux, I use xrdp for server and rdesktop or tsclient for client, all of which are typically included (but not necessarily installed) on most Linux distributions.
  • X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP): allows Windows → Linux or Linux → Linux.
    For Windows, cygwin should be installed with X support.  Then, use XWin -query hostname there hostname is the Linux server name to log into.  (Commercial software, such as Hummingbird’s Exceed, is also an alternative.)
    On Linux, this is usually available by default, although it may need to be configured to be used.
  • NX Technology: allows Windows → Linux or Linux → Linux, and I’ve seen it work well on relatively slower connections, and it tends to show good performance.
    NoMachine provides free binaries for Windows and Linux.

If running ANSYS interactively, you may wish to use the 2D graphics device (“x11” or “x11c”) rather than OpenGL (“3D”), although you may want to test the performance first if you’re uncertain.  Typically, trying to run OpenGL programs remotely doesn’t work very well (even if you disable OpenGL hardware acceleration on both the client and server).  For example, using Workbench on a Windows server over RDP can be quite painful…