X2Go - portable installation

X2Go can be installed onto a USB flashdrive and run on most Windows PCs, including ones where you do not have permission to install new software.

1. Do a regular installation of the X2Go client on a Windows PC or find such a PC with a recent version already installed.

2. Insert your USB flash drive. Find the directory where X2Go was installed on the PC, typically C:\Program Files (x86)\x2goclient. Copy that x2goclient directory to your flash drive.

3. Using the Windows file explorer, view the contents of your flash drive.

   • I’m going to assume it is in D:\. If your drive winds up in E:\ or some other drive letter, modify the instructions below accordingly.

4. In that top level of your flash drive, right-click and select New -> shortcut.

   • For the location of the item, use the “Browse” button to find the x2goclient.exe applicaiton. (Windows may or may not show you the “.exe” part of the file name.) Most likely, this is in D:\x2goclient\x2goclient.exe.

   • Once you have selected the location, modify it by adding a space and then

     --portable --home=.
     

     So the total line will probably look like

     D:\x2goclient\x2goclient.exe --portable --home=.
     

   • Click the Next button and type a name for your shourtcut.

     I recommend something like “x2go on D:”. It’s possible that, when you use this on a different machine, you will find your flashdrive showing up on a different drive letter. In that case, you may need to create a second shortcut to use from that drive letter.

5. That’s it! You should be able to launch X2Go by double-clicking your new shortcut.

   Don’t be worried if you get a lot of pop-up boxes asking for network permissions, particularly when running on on strange machines where you have few permissions of your own. As far as I can tell, you can “Cancel” all of those without any negative effects.