Hi, I am trying to get X windows to work on my Linode, so I can run things like Emacs with a graphical interface. I'm using Cygwin, and it's worked fine with other remote servers.

So far I have done:
apt-get install xterm
apt-get install xauth

In cygwin I do someting like "ssh -XY name@linodehost.com"

Everything works, but when I open up Emacs it is very slow and almost unusable. I'm wondering if there's something I can do to speed it up (compression?) or if it's just a limitation of the network connection.

ssh -C for compression (man ssh).

And look, I didn't even start a vim vs. emacs 'discussion'.



Edited for verbosity:

There was a discussion on this recently (http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2920), however unless you have a very good line to the server, your sanity would perhaps best be preserved by either a) running emacs in text mode on the server, or b) emacs (gui) on your cygwin setup and opening the file remotely (sshfs, emacs' tramp mode, etc.).