Re: [9front] web browsing- vmx/vnc/rd/x2go/orher machine

[ori@eigenstate.org]

Quoth Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net>:
> 
> hi,
> 
> i have not used plan9 for a couple of
> years (p9p only) but have set up a pi
> again.
> 
> i have also never used 9front.
> 
> what do you people use?


Personally, a mix of mothra and vnc; I've
got a smallish vultr vm that I have for vnc
when on the road, as well as my work machine
that I use as a vnc host at home.

I'm hoping to replace that with vmx, but vmx
needs some perf work.

> are there any solutions for web browsing (where
> abaco and mothra are not enough) on 9front?

There's a native netsurf port:

    https://github.com/netsurf-plan9/nsport

It works ok, though it's still kind of slow
fetching over webfs.

There's some work that needs to be done still:
something to do with the scheduler making i/o
slow. Phil9 can probably fill in a bit more on
that front.

> is vxe fast enough to run linux well?
> do you use remote desktop (rd) or vnc?
> maybe you just have a 2nd machine for that?

I've found vmx frustratingly slow. But the path
to fixing it seems clear.

There are almost certainly a handful of operations
that we're doing really frequently, and we're doing
a context switch to the vmx proc on every vm exit.
A shortcut in kernel for simple, common operations
will probably speed things up quite a bit.

I need to find time to identify the operations that
matter, and write some code.

> finally, anyone any opinions on x2go which some
> claim is the most performant remote screen technology.

Heard of it -- never tried, but it's likely to be
a lot of effort to port or rewrite.