Remote login... Oh Boy

[Wayne Davis]

Ok,

Years ago, when i worked for frontier global-center, I remember that we 
could "rlogin" to a system and "Startx".   At least I REMEMBER it this way.
My recollection was that I was running the GUI LOCALLY and metatdata was 
being transferred across.   VERY fast & efficient screens.

A:   AM I recalling wrongly?
B:   I'm wanting to set up a server box on my network  for files, music, 
video that will be headless (No monitor or mouse connected)

         Running Kubuntu 12.04 as primary OS on all boxes here.
          I see rlogin, ssh,   blah blah blah.......


I'm looking for EFFICIENT GUI presentation, File transfers.

xvnc11 works but is slow, teamviewer is making connections outside my 
network to operate AND is wine based :-(

What should I use that will keep it S I M P L E (if possible) and 
secure  ( I am behind a M0n0wall WRAP firewall)  I want to be able to 
connect at will.


        Is this going to be a major pain?


Thanks everyone for your thoughts  :-)