I'm running putty on a windows machine and logging in to a fedora 25 desktop machine on my LAN. I've been trawling google trying to find a way to run commands in putty to open programs on the fedora desktop but nothing works. I always get " cannot open display: :0" or something similar.
I found this thread https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/...-applications/ but when I run commands in putty I still get:
Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0
I've tried export DISPLAY=:0 in putty first but that doesn't work either. I've had success remotely connecting to the fedora desktop using x11vnc but that requires starting x11vnc on the desktop machine first and then switching to putty on windows. I need to get putty to open GUI programs from putty/windows without having to touch the fedora machine. I also saw this link https://www.suse.com/communities/blo...lays-remotely/ but that doesn't work for me either. Thanks for any help.

You need to install an x server on Windows to run remote applications like cygwin/x or xming via PuTTy. Since xllvnc is a server you should be able to start it at boot up.

http://x.cygwin.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/

does that fedora desktop have GUI installed at all? Does any kind of window manager running on it?
You cannot display linux graphical apps on native windows desktop, you may need either vnc (installed server on linux) or X server (installed on windows).

@pen64 yes the fedora machine has a gui. As I said earlier I can access the fedora desktop from a remote windows machine using vnc, that's not a problem. The problem is I can't run commands from a remote putty session to open programs on the fedora desktop. I've since discovered I can do this on a fedora 20 machine but a fedora 25 machine will not work.

Are you accessing the fedora 20 machine using Windows?

yeah, using putty on a windows machine

That would imply that a x server is running?

Is x11 forwarding enabled on the fedora 25 machine? (/etc/ssh/sshd_config)

it is enabled. In /etc/ssh/sshd_config I have X11Forwarding yes

What x server is running on the Windows machine?

VcxSrv (free) is a pretty easy windows X-server. I use it with putty to X-forward from Fedora/CentOS computers.

You need to enable X-Forwarding in putty configuration for the connection.

While there are testing stuff. Try mobaxterm. Quick easy portable program to try. I assume the entire issue is on the Centos setup however.

Easiest way I've found to do this is to install vncserver on the Fedora box, make sure it's configured appropriately etc. ... .

Then, when you log in with putty, issue the command:

.. on on the Fedora box. After it initializes, you'll be able to connect to it with the vnc client on the Windows box.

Do it all the time - works reliably.

Cheers.