Since May 2007, payment must be made to download new releases. The software has been recommended by authors of books on free software when a free X server is needed, and described as simple and easier to install though less configurable than other popular free choices like Cygwin/X. When SSH forwarding is not used, the local file Xn.hosts must be updated with host name or IP address of the remote machine where the GUI application is started. The Xming project also offers a portable version of PuTTY. It supports PuTTY and ssh.exe, and comes with a version of PuTTY's plink.exe. Xming may be used with implementations of Secure Shell (SSH) to securely forward X11 sessions from other computers. Xming runs natively on Windows and does not need any third-party emulation software.

It is cross-compiled on Linux with the MinGW compiler suite and the Pthreads-Win32 multi-threading library. The Xming X server is based on Cygwin/X, the X.Org Server. It features support of several languages and has Mesa 3D, OpenGL, and GLX 3D graphics extensions capabilities.

Xming provides the X Window System display server, a set of traditional sample X applications and tools, as well as a set of fonts.

Xming fonts