I already sent the last rites announce a few days ago, but here is a more detailed post on the coming up removal of “old” NX packages. Long story short: migrate to X2Go if possible, or use the NX overlay (“best-effort” support provided).
2015/04/26 note: treecleaning done!
Affected packages
Basically, all NX clients and servers except x2go and nxplayer! Here is the complete list with some specific last rites reasons:
- net-misc/nxclient,net-misc/nxnode,net-misc/nxserver-freeedition: binary-only original NX client and server. Upstream has moved on to a closed-source technology, and this version bundles potientally vulnerable binary code. It does not work as well as before with current libraries (like Cairo).
- net-misc/nxserver-freenx, net-misc/nxsadmin: the first open-source alternative server. It could be tricky to get working, and is not updated anymore (last upstream activity around 2009)
- net-misc/nxcl, net-misc/qtnx: an open-source alternative client (last upstream activity around 2008)
- net-misc/neatx: Google’s take on a NX server, sadly it never took off (last upstream activity around 2010)
- app-admin/eselect-nxserver (an eselect module to switch active NX server, useless without these servers in tree)
Continue using these packages on Gentoo
These packages will be dropped from the main tree by the end of this month (2015/04), and then only available in the NX overlay. They will still be supported there in a “best effort” way (no guarantee how long some of these packages will work with current systems).
So, if one of these packages still works better for you, or you need to keep them around before migrating, just run:
# layman -a nx
Alternatives
While it is not a direct drop-in replacement, x2go is the most complete solution currently in Gentoo tree (and my recommendation), with a lot of possible advanced features, active upstream development, … You can connect to net-misc/x2goserver with net-misc/x2goclient, net-misc/pyhoca-gui, or net-misc/pyhoca-cli.
If you want to try NoMachine’s (the company that created NX) new system, well the client is available in Portage as net-misc/nxplayer. The server itself is not packaged yet, if you are interested in it, this is bug #488334