scripsit Don Calfa:
> What is the difference using -X or not?

-X allows tunelling X over the SSH connection.  -x disallows it.
Normally (at least in Debian) tunelling is not the default.

> I ssh from T1 (office) to 256k (home dsl) and can do fine on CLI.  If I 
> type "nautilus", I get nautilus on the local running from the remote and 
> it takes a couple of minutes.  

A 256k line might not be enough to run Gnome or KDE apps with acceptable
performance this way; stick to Athena apps, for example, and you'll see
_much_ better performance.  I can run Xpdf and Xdvi, for example, over a
Cox connection the `wrong way' (i.e., capped at 256k), but Galeon would
be massively painful.

Now, if you're _really_ unconcerned about security, change $DISPLAY on
the remote host from 'localhost:10.0' (that's usually what ssh -X sets
it to) to '$HOST:0.0' where $HOST is the host you're sshing in from.
This will be snappier because it skips the tunelling and encryption.  It
is also very insecure.

> What am I supposed to get if I
> 
> ssh -l me <ip> -X
> 
> because it doesn't seem to do anything different.  Either that doesn't 
> matter or my ssh is not optimized.

If with and without -X both allows you to bring up an X app, then your
ssh client is configured with -X as the default -- so it won't do
anything different.

-- 
Pax vobiscum; pax cum omnibus.

Thanasis Kinias
tkinias at asu.edu
Doctoral Student, Department of History
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.