VNC is one way of doing it, but that is not as well integrated as running an actual remote X server in windows.
The Unix X Window system can connect remotely to any other X Window system, in much the same way the Citrix Winframe works for Windows, except this functionality is built into X Window. There are several companies that write software that allows Windows to run this remote connectivity to an X window system. My favorite at the moment is X-Win32 by
Be aware of one possible misunderstanding that can happen: In discussing the X system, for some reason the terminology is reversed from our normal conception of client-server computing, so now the system where you want to connect
from is running the X server, while the Unix system you are connecting to is running the X client. (Don't ask me why, but there is a technical geeky kind of reason for this.) Anyway, just remember that and you will be OK with X-win32.
Now, maybe I and d3funct are misunderstanding you and you
don't want to connect over the network to another Linux desktop. Then the only thing I can conclude is you are looking for something like Linux4win (
or VMWare (
This doesn't mean you are running a Linux interface in Windows, but that you can load Linux
from Windows.