I want to create a windows 7 machine and install ssh on this machine. I then want to use my pen pad from my linux computer on the windows 7 machine. Will this work? If it can, then it could be possible for me to have things like modo, zbush and mudbox. I am not willing to give up my linux host, but would like to run some windows applications not supported by wine.
Well, here’s how I do it: I bought an external hard drive, then installed Oracle’s VirtualBox virtual-machine monitor. I install (various versions of …) Windows in virtual machines which are hosted off of that external drive. (For convenience, the “disk drives” are host files.)
Problem solved. VirtualBox runs virtual machines very well – (no surprise, considering who makes it!) – and Windows doesn’t care that it is running in a virtual machine.
VirtualBox is full-featured … and free. (Per contra, VMWare is hobbled and expensive.)
Finally, when it comes time to set up “secure communications,” I would point you to OpenVPN. Although they have (very good …) commercial offerings, they also have free open-source downloads (and Linux packages). OpenVPN uses the same TLS/SSL infrastructure that is used by “https” web sites. And what it gives you is a simple secure router. You “open up the tunnel,” and the remote subnet is “simply, there.”
Unlike SSH, you don’t have to “do” anything to ensure that the communications are secure, or worry that they’re not. You just talk to the remote subnet as though it were local. (If you want them to, they can similarly talk back to you.) All of the crypto voodoo happens behind the scenes – It Just Works.™
The moniker, “Virtual Private Network,” is quite-literally true.
And, you can set up the tunnel so that its very existence is un-detectable from the outside world. Unauthorized parties can’t connect to you – they can’t even knock on your door.
Number of unauthorized access attempts: Zero.