* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like @ 2017-03-17 15:39 Noel Chiappa 2017-03-17 17:56 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Noel Chiappa @ 2017-03-17 15:39 UTC (permalink / raw) > From: "Ron Natalie" >>> I think most people will attribute the desktop metaphor to Xerox. >> Strictly speaking, to Smalltalk (from PARC) ^^^^ > I beg to differ. The Star not only pioneered the WISIWYG application > presentation PARC _was_ Xerox. The Star was a product based on the Alto, but much of the Star stuff was pioneered on the Alto. For instance, WYSIWYG was one of the modes that the Alto's Bravo editor could be run in; it definitely pre-dates the Star. > also the concept of the desktop. Depending on exactly what you mean by 'desktop', that also pre-dated the Star. I heard the multiple overlapping windows of Smalltalk (an Alto application) likened to a collection of sheets of paper on a desktop (which is where the term came from); clicking on one with the mouse brought it to the top, just like pulling a particular sheet of paper out from the ones on a physical desktop. > The whole conscept of dropping documents as icons on the desktop appears > to have orginated there. Yes, as I mentioned: >> things like Bravo, and the basic user command interface on the Alto >> [the Exec, my brain finally coughed up the name - can't find my Alto >> manual at the moment] didn't have any concept of windows/desktop The concept of having a graphical front end as the main user interface was not from the Alto, and the Alto didn't have icons either; both came later (I'll let the Lisa people and Star people argue that one out). Noel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 15:39 [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like Noel Chiappa @ 2017-03-17 17:56 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 17:56 UTC (permalink / raw) > PARC _was_ Xerox. I know PARC was XEROX, the part of my message you edited out clearly says that. The quote you misattributed to me was Arnold's. > The concept of having a graphical front end as the main user interface was not from the Alto, and the Alto didn't have icons either; both came later (I'll let the Lisa people and Star people argue that one out). Yeah, well they can argue, but it's pretty clear Xerox came first. Of course, neither the Star or Lisa were really full fledged commercial products, but one might argue they are both Alto follow ons. Jobs had seen the Alto at PARC before Lisa was very far along. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like @ 2017-03-17 13:05 Noel Chiappa 2017-03-17 15:06 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Noel Chiappa @ 2017-03-17 13:05 UTC (permalink / raw) > From: "Ron Natalie" > I think most people will attribute the desktop metaphor to Xerox. Strictly speaking, to Smalltalk (from PARC); things like Bravo, and the basic user command interface on the Alto (I forget what its name was), didn't have any concept of windows/desktop (although Bravo did use the bitmap screen). Noel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 13:05 Noel Chiappa @ 2017-03-17 15:06 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 15:06 UTC (permalink / raw) I beg to differ. The Star not only pioneered the WISIWYG application presentation also the concept of the desktop. The whole conscept of dropping documents as icons on the desktop appears to have orginated there. Of course, as with a lot of nifty stuff PARC and the other Xerox research guys came up with, it never really saw wholesale product development. -----Original Message----- From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa Sent: Friday, March 17, 2017 9:06 AM To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Subject: Re: [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like > From: "Ron Natalie" > I think most people will attribute the desktop metaphor to Xerox. Strictly speaking, to Smalltalk (from PARC); things like Bravo, and the basic user command interface on the Alto (I forget what its name was), didn't have any concept of windows/desktop (although Bravo did use the bitmap screen). Noel ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like @ 2017-03-14 18:49 Ron Natalie [not found] ` <CAH1jEzY5g6zGSxsXEHc+Q7mYyegU+aSr-zpfJ0cwRfSGSUdgCg@mail.gmail.com> 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-14 18:49 UTC (permalink / raw) Nice thing about X was that it would talk to remote displays. I still remember sitting in the Pentagon demonstrating that the Suntools screen lock wasn't particularly secure. Then there was NeWS. This was Gosling's first attempt at a deployable language. However PostScript (even with Owen Densmore's class extensions), while a reasonable intermediary language is really sucky to actually develop. Java was a bit more refined. Of course, lots of things either implement X under the native window system or backdoor X with local extensions. We got around doing high frame rate image work on X via the SharedMemoryExtension and the ability to flip buffers on the retrace interval (both extensions, but commonly implemented by many servers). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
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* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like [not found] ` <CAH1jEzav9Y0vM75GaVqVBj=0nXmjdjucF+mx=FBkRO4QP8Soeg@mail.gmail.com> @ 2017-03-15 1:13 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 10:15 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-15 20:48 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 1:13 UTC (permalink / raw) Hmm yes although perhaps controversially I see this as a bad feature and one area where Microsoft actually gets it right. Despite the old issues of "DLL Hell" which have largely been resolved by standardizing all DLLs and in newer code by using assemblies... you have to admit that they provide a direct, local API (indeed ABI) to every subsystem you would want to use, here I am thinking of GDI, but also lots of things that would require ioctls (CD burning, say) or domain specific languages (such as Postscript) on Linux. This makes it really easy for Windows developers to use the feature and the interface is fast and reliable. And where a domain specific language is actually NEEDED (printing to a Postscript printer on Windows, or RDP-type desktop remoting etc) it is easy to insert a proxy DLL or object or device driver that does the necessary scrambling and unscrambling. It is not so easy to go the other way as it requires extensive emulation (think of ghostscript driving my Canon non-PS printer). I wrote about this issue earlier using some examples like an "ESC [" capable terminal as opposed to a memory mapped local console, or an "AT" capable external modem as opposed to an internal "WinModem" that just exposes its D/A and A/D converters with minimal signal processing and needs the host to do the heavy lifting. Same thing applies to a graphics terminal. Of course it should be programmed at a high level by specifying shapes, etc to be drawn, regions to be blitted, clipping regions and pens etc, a font manager, and it should be possible to load bitmaps, etc, into its offscreen memory and/or create offscreen drawing buffers, if these features are used correctly by applications then it is of course trivial to add a remoting proxy driver similar to Microsoft's RDP, or indeed X Windows. But the difficulty with X Windows is that the remoting layer is always there, even though it is almost completely redundant today. This hurts performance but more importantly it requires extensive workarounds as you described, which add enormous extra complexity and in my view sharply increase the learning curve and setup costs. Having said that, Xlib does offer a decent API/ABI so if we just code to that it's not TOO bad, I would like to see the rest of it deprecated though, and vendors encouraged to implement Xlib with whatever backend seems appropriate. The ridiculous thing here is that X setup is so damn convoluted and incestuously tied in with the window, session and display managers, THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO RUN X REMOTELY ANYMORE AND HAVE A FULL FEATURED DESKTOP, I have tried many times and have had various tries at thin clients and terminal serving in my home network and it basically fell over because environments like Gnome do not support multiple sessions of the same home directory, not to mention numerous other problems that mean if you login remotely you basically just get a blank screen with a default X cursor and maybe a context menu that can run an Xterm. Bleh! In my experience you have to use a remoter like VNC and guess what that does, tricks X into thinking it's running locally and then intervenes further up in the display stack to do the actual remoting. It's a complete dog's breakfast and frankly could never compete with Windows in any realistic way. I use it because it is the least bad of the available options (no way am I having advertising in my start menu and my computer loaded with bloatware and spyware before I even open the box, and no way am I putting up with vague messages like "Something went wrong" or "Windows is making some checks to optimize your experience" or whatnot), and because my computer is so fast despite being 6yrs old that X only feels borderline sluggish, i.e. is tolerable. But so much better would be possible with a redesign. CUPS is also a dogs breakfast and hugely unreliable, Windows GDI printing just wins hands down for all the same reasons. End rant. Nick On Mar 15, 2017 5:49 AM, "Ron Natalie" <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote: Nice thing about X was that it would talk to remote displays. I still remember sitting in the Pentagon demonstrating that the Suntools screen lock wasn't particularly secure. Then there was NeWS. This was Gosling's first attempt at a deployable language. However PostScript (even with Owen Densmore's class extensions), while a reasonable intermediary language is really sucky to actually develop. Java was a bit more refined. Of course, lots of things either implement X under the native window system or backdoor X with local extensions. We got around doing high frame rate image work on X via the SharedMemoryExtension and the ability to flip buffers on the retrace interval (both extensions, but commonly implemented by many servers). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170315/bdcb123b/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 1:13 ` Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 10:15 ` Tim Bradshaw [not found] ` <CAH1jEzb7tKSa5H_k-pCT_7x6xzJHdavm4dZySnhkmYL7WG2HEA@mail.gmail.com> 2017-03-15 20:48 ` Ron Natalie 1 sibling, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-15 10:15 UTC (permalink / raw) On 15 Mar 2017, at 01:13, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: > > But the difficulty with X Windows is that the remoting layer is always there, even though it is almost completely redundant today. It's redundant if you don't ever use machines which you aren't physically sitting next to and want to run any kind of graphical tool run on them. I do that all the time. --tim ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
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* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like [not found] ` <CAH1jEza9jmb09SDvQi5cQV_g6oO97dgx-VsQobMG=RddqRBxsA@mail.gmail.com> @ 2017-03-15 11:03 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 12:03 ` tfb 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 11:03 UTC (permalink / raw) I realized after writing that I was being slightly unfair since one valid use case that DOES work correctly is something like: ssh -X <some host> <command that uses X> This is occasionally handy, although the best use case I can think of is running a browser on some internet-facing machine so as to temporarily change your IP address, and this use case isn't exactly bulletproof since at least google chrome will look for a running instance and hand over to it (despite that instance having a different DISPLAY= setting). Nevertheless my point stands which is that IMO a programmatic API (either through .so or .dll linkage, or through ioctls or dedicated syscalls) should be the first resort and anything else fancy such as remoting, domain specific languages, /proc or fuse type interfaces, whatever, should be done through extra layers as appropriate. You shouldn't HAVE to use them. cheers, Nick On Mar 15, 2017 9:15 PM, "Tim Bradshaw" <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote: On 15 Mar 2017, at 01:13, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: > > But the difficulty with X Windows is that the remoting layer is always there, even though it is almost completely redundant today. It's redundant if you don't ever use machines which you aren't physically sitting next to and want to run any kind of graphical tool run on them. I do that all the time. --tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170315/32bb48fd/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 11:03 ` Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 12:03 ` tfb 2017-03-15 13:12 ` Nick Downing 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: tfb @ 2017-03-15 12:03 UTC (permalink / raw) On 15 Mar 2017, at 11:03, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: > > I realized after writing that I was being slightly unfair since one valid use case that DOES work correctly is something like: > ssh -X <some host> <command that uses X> > This is occasionally handy, although the best use case I can think of is running a browser on some internet-facing machine so as to temporarily change your IP address I think you live in a strange alternative world, or (more likely) I do. My world is better however. In my world I have a machine on my desk which runs an X server (which currently is talking to the physical screen, but will I hope soon be some kind of VNC so I can push this display to wherever I need it). I also use a large number of machines which don't have any kind of screen and on which I may want to run graphical tools. In my experience this is what researchy type places with large-scale computing requirements have looked like essentially for ever, and it's the environment X was designed for (well, probably it was actually designed for student access at MIT but it very quickly moved into these environments). And it works *really* well, and anything which replaces it needs to work at least as well. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170315/2cb03fe6/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 12:03 ` tfb @ 2017-03-15 13:12 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 14:37 ` tfb 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier 0 siblings, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 13:12 UTC (permalink / raw) Hmm well that DOES sound a bit patronizing, no offence taken though, I think it's more that I almost never use graphical tools, well at least not for any sysadmin or development type work. In the last day I ran chromium browser, xviewer (AKA eye of gnome), xreader (AKA evince), the gimp, libreoffice writer, and (currently) mplayer... these are all exclusively because I HAD to work with an inherently graphical resource, so there was no reasonable alternative but to run those programs. For anything else I would use the command line (occasionally I do DSP type stuff with matplotlib or gamey type stuff with pygame I guess). I can't honestly see a use case where I would ever want to run any of those programs on a server, since I associate all those activities with personal type stuff that only happens on my laptop, occasionally on my home server in its role as media centre connected to TV but not much. So that's why I say that X remoting is irrelevant to me. At one stage I had a separate office with thin clients (and experimental setups at home etc) but frankly it was not that useable, not with gnome at least due to single session limitation. I also had in the last 6 years a separate office and server at uni, I briefly ran VNC on it and I had to do the ssh -X thing on it once or twice for whatever reason (get an important bookmark URL, check a large Google Drive upload, that sort of thing) but I never considered actually running a graphical app on it since I could just git pull and run locally. So it's not that I haven't been exposed to servers or haven't tried those commands or whatnot, it's actually that I've attempted to use that functionality where appropriate (got excited about it, and then disillusioned later), and really thought about it carefully in order to optimize my setup and development costs, and concluded that that technology is irrelevant to my workflow and not worth the setup cost. If X were to be de-bloatified and large chunks of it deprecated and deleted in order to make configuration simple, logical and flexible, then that may change. Hmm. Nick On Mar 15, 2017 11:03 PM, <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote: > On 15 Mar 2017, at 11:03, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: > > > I realized after writing that I was being slightly unfair since one valid > use case that DOES work correctly is something like: > ssh -X <some host> <command that uses X> > This is occasionally handy, although the best use case I can think of is > running a browser on some internet-facing machine so as to temporarily > change your IP address > > > I think you live in a strange alternative world, or (more likely) I do. > My world is better however. In my world I have a machine on my desk which > runs an X server (which currently is talking to the physical screen, but > will I hope soon be some kind of VNC so I can push this display to wherever > I need it). I also use a large number of machines which don't have any > kind of screen and on which I may want to run graphical tools. > > In my experience this is what researchy type places with large-scale > computing requirements have looked like essentially for ever, and it's the > environment X was designed for (well, probably it was actually designed for > student access at MIT but it very quickly moved into these environments). > And it works *really* well, and anything which replaces it needs to work at > least as well. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170316/0c54203c/attachment-0001.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 13:12 ` Nick Downing @ 2017-03-15 14:37 ` tfb 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: tfb @ 2017-03-15 14:37 UTC (permalink / raw) On 15 Mar 2017, at 13:12, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: > > Hmm well that DOES sound a bit patronizing Sorry, it was not meant to be. All I was trying to say was that X in fact works extremely well for the environments it is designed for (in which I now work), and for people who need to use graphical tools in those environments, and ripping out the network transparency (which seems to be what a bunch of people want to do) would be this geological step backwards in those environments: a GUI which is local to one machine is just a hugely limiting thing. The whole reason I originally started using X was not that it was faster than Suntools (because it was catastrophically slower) but the network transparency. I think the bloat argument is also one of those things which has been overtaken by events: X is bloated in the sense that Common Lisp is bloated: they were both a serious pain in the 1990s, but compared to anything with the word 'enterprise' in its name they now look like these svelte lightweight things which start in a tiny fraction of a second. But I don't want to get into a fight about this and it's probably off-topic anyway (and again, sorry if I seemed patronising that was not my intention at all: probably should not send email with a cold). --tim ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 13:12 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 14:37 ` tfb @ 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier 2017-03-15 16:52 ` Arthur Krewat 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 1 sibling, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Kurt H Maier @ 2017-03-15 16:40 UTC (permalink / raw) On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 12:12:12AM +1100, Nick Downing wrote: > Hmm well that DOES sound a bit patronizing, no offence taken though, I > think it's more that I almost never use graphical tools, well at least not > for any sysadmin or development type work. In the last day I ran chromium > browser, xviewer (AKA eye of gnome), xreader (AKA evince), the gimp, > libreoffice writer, and (currently) mplayer... these are all exclusively > because I HAD to work with an inherently graphical resource, so there was > no reasonable alternative but to run those programs. For anything else I > would use the command line (occasionally I do DSP type stuff with > matplotlib or gamey type stuff with pygame I guess). I can't honestly see a > use case where I would ever want to run any of those programs on a server, Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different programs. It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the functionality should be deleted. khm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier @ 2017-03-15 16:52 ` Arthur Krewat 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Arthur Krewat @ 2017-03-15 16:52 UTC (permalink / raw) I just installed the latest version of Oracle's Forms/Reports 12c for a customer and it uses an X-windows installer. Guess how I remote displayed it back to my VNC session that is running on a "jump server"? On 3/15/2017 12:40 PM, Kurt H Maier wrote: > Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator > too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different > programs. > > It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. > That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the > functionality should be deleted. > > khm > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier 2017-03-15 16:52 ` Arthur Krewat @ 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek ` (3 more replies) 1 sibling, 4 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Josh Good @ 2017-03-16 23:04 UTC (permalink / raw) On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: > > Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator > too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different > programs. > > It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. > That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the > functionality should be deleted. I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that does not happen in the RDP/ICA world. The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, self-contained, GUI desktop". In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X, of course). -- Josh Good ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good @ 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek 2017-03-17 1:15 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Robert Swierczek @ 2017-03-16 23:29 UTC (permalink / raw) Here is my 2 cents to add: I think both approaches have their pro's and con's. This is what I would like to see in an ideal remote GUI environment (I'll use the X11 convention for display server and application client): Mostly stateless as in VNC, little or no round-tripping of messages. Client application contains a very small library (not a whole GUI rendering library as needed by remote desk-topping). Lighter than Xlib. Maybe on the order of curses. Suitable for embedded devices. Client should be tolerant of server going down and reconnecting (as in VNC) because of a crash or migration. User should see their application rendered in the servers widget scheme. Server can be implemented natively or in a browser. Some form of remote OpenGL supported (as in JS/WebGL) On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 7:04 PM, Josh Good <pepe at naleco.com> wrote: > On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: >> >> Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator >> too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different >> programs. >> >> It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. >> That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the >> functionality should be deleted. > > I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, > but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any > network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that > does not happen in the RDP/ICA world. > > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 > forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) > which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only > bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, > self-contained, GUI desktop". > > In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more > for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is > just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X, > of course). > > -- > Josh Good > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek @ 2017-03-17 1:15 ` Nick Downing 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Nick Downing @ 2017-03-17 1:15 UTC (permalink / raw) I think the main difference being discussed here is 3 approaches to remote logins: (1) the user has a single login session, effectively a console, and can connect to it/view it/interact with it from anywhere (2) the user creates a new login session whenever they connect to the server from a new station (or separately from the same station) (3) the user has a local GUI console and login session, but windows can be created in it that connect to remotely running apps I would say that VNC, RDP are cases of type (1) whereas standard X remoting (where a display manager runs on a diskless client, say) is type (2) and "ssh -X" type X remoting is type (3). Ignoring type (3) for the moment, I would say these approaches have the following advantages/disadvantages: - (1) is failsafe to dropped connections, etc, where (2) is not - (1) is helpful for remote assistance since multiple parties can view or interact with the desktop, where (2) is not - (2) should be IMO more efficient since all context is maintained in the terminal and the running applications can store stuff in offscreen memory, invoke complex drawing primitives, etc, where (1) lends itself more naturally to doing the drawing operations locally and then sending bitmap "patches" to the changed areas of the screen (this is what gives it the failsafe nature and also why apparently some people see it running faster, because of bitmap compression) - (2) is more powerful and scriptable IMO since a new session doesn't hurt or depend on any other session, it seems more unix-like considering how we use ssh and subshells and so on, basically multiuser facilities being used single-user, whereas the type (1) IMO seems limited in scalability and might also run into performance problems with super high resolution displays, or lesser hardware that can't compress bitmaps quickly. Types 1 and 2 have a direct analogue to console terminal sessions: (1) is where the user runs "screen" (or something like "nohup") whereas (2) is where the user does an "ssh" to the server causing the sshd to fork a new session. Personally, I think the type (2) should be extended to handle the use cases of type (1) since I believe it is more efficient for context to be stored in the terminal and drawing operations carried out there. So the ideal way I believe to handle these cases in a "new generation, de-bloatified X" would be to provide an optional utility like "screen" which caches any state which has been sent to the terminal, keeping dirty flags etc to indicate whether such state has also been forwarded onto the real terminal, and re-generate the protocol and all drawing commands having sent any dependencies such as offscreen bitmaps first. That way, you could have a type (2) system, but log into shared sessions and/or re-log into dropped sessions, migrate sessions and so on. But since the "screen" like program would be a separately installed, optional package, it wouldn't impact on the simplified base system unless you wanted this function. cheers, Nick On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 10:29 AM, Robert Swierczek <rmswierczek at gmail.com> wrote: > Here is my 2 cents to add: I think both approaches have their pro's > and con's. This is what I would like to see in an ideal remote GUI > environment (I'll use the X11 convention for display server and > application client): > > Mostly stateless as in VNC, little or no round-tripping of messages. > > Client application contains a very small library (not a whole GUI > rendering library as needed by remote desk-topping). Lighter than > Xlib. Maybe on the order of curses. Suitable for embedded devices. > > Client should be tolerant of server going down and reconnecting (as in > VNC) because of a crash or migration. > > User should see their application rendered in the servers widget scheme. > > Server can be implemented natively or in a browser. > > Some form of remote OpenGL supported (as in JS/WebGL) > > > On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 7:04 PM, Josh Good <pepe at naleco.com> wrote: >> On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: >>> >>> Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator >>> too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different >>> programs. >>> >>> It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. >>> That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the >>> functionality should be deleted. >> >> I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, >> but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any >> network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that >> does not happen in the RDP/ICA world. >> >> The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 >> forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) >> which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only >> bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, >> self-contained, GUI desktop". >> >> In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more >> for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is >> just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X, >> of course). >> >> -- >> Josh Good >> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek @ 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 0:05 ` Lyndon Nerenberg ` (3 more replies) 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-19 6:11 ` Robert Brockway 3 siblings, 4 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-16 23:29 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 16, 2017, at 4:04 PM, Josh Good <pepe at naleco.com> wrote: > > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". The Mac proclaimed the bitmap screen interface to the world, but X11 (and Sunview) pretty much invented the GUI desktop metaphor. Into the mid-late 1990s I was managing shops that were using NCD X11 network terminals to run all sorts of GUI-based office applications (WYSIWIG word processing, spreadsheets, what have you) off UNIX hosts, well before the web was anything more than a curiosity. And that pedigree dates back to the mid-1980s, where SunOS 3 helped define the concept of diskless clients. Which isn't quite the same thing, but all of this was happening long before, say, Windows came along. And *well* before Windows had the concept of remote GUI access. And that was *well* *well* before those Windows machines grokked the concept of multiple-users-on-independent-graphical-desktops remote access. Circa 1994, a batch of 20 colour NCD X terminals talking to something like an SGI Onyx would kick the living daylights out of an equivalent set of 20 80486 Windows 3.11 desktops, on compute performance, for the GUI desktop environment they provided, and overall functionality and productivity. --lyndon ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 0:05 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 5:55 ` arnold ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 0:05 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 16, 2017, at 4:29 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > for the GUI desktop environment they provided I forgot to clarify: the Irix [56].X desktop environment. Which was light years ahead of everyone else at the time. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 0:05 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 5:55 ` arnold 2017-03-17 12:56 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-17 15:19 ` Tim Bradshaw 3 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: arnold @ 2017-03-17 5:55 UTC (permalink / raw) Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". > > The Mac proclaimed the bitmap screen interface to the world, but X11 > (and Sunview) pretty much invented the GUI desktop metaphor. I thought all this really went back to the work at Xerox PARC. The Alto and so on; we had a few at Georgia Tech in the mid '80s, before Suns. Arnold ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 0:05 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 5:55 ` arnold @ 2017-03-17 12:56 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-17 15:19 ` Tim Bradshaw 3 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 12:56 UTC (permalink / raw) >> The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". > The Mac proclaimed the bitmap screen interface to the world, but X11 (and Sunview) pretty much invented the GUI desktop metaphor. I think most people will attribute the desktop metaphor to Xerox. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2017-03-17 12:56 ` Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 15:19 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-17 20:17 ` Josh Good 3 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-17 15:19 UTC (permalink / raw) On 16 Mar 2017, at 23:29, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > The Mac proclaimed the bitmap screen interface to the world, but X11 (and Sunview) pretty much invented the GUI desktop metaphor. As someone who used Xerox machines: no, they didn't. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 15:19 ` Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-17 20:17 ` Josh Good 2017-03-17 20:30 ` Ron Natalie 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Josh Good @ 2017-03-17 20:17 UTC (permalink / raw) On 2017 Mar 17, 15:19, Tim Bradshaw wrote: > On 16 Mar 2017, at 23:29, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > > > The Mac proclaimed the bitmap screen interface to the world, but X11 (and Sunview) pretty much invented the GUI desktop metaphor. > > As someone who used Xerox machines: no, they didn't. I concur that the Xerox GUI was not a "desktop metaphor". The "GUI desktop metaphor" embodies much more than a graphical canvas where to move a pointer to click around. It needs the concept of "unified session" and of "private session" to happen too. On X11, you have a root window where different remote apps from different remote systems and from different logged users can draw things. That's not a "desktop metaphor", that's just a "blackboard metaphor". A "desktop metaphor" needs the "private unified session" concept to happen too. X was designed at MIT way before the "desktop metaphor", which probably was invented (as such) in the McIntosh. -- Josh Good ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 20:17 ` Josh Good @ 2017-03-17 20:30 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-17 20:44 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 20:30 UTC (permalink / raw) We're waffling here. The Star had more than just a mouse to move things around. It had icons representing the documents on the desktop, something that the X window managers didn't get for quite some time (and don't really still work right). I'm not sure how you are defining the "desktop metaphor" but Apple and Xerox had it long before X. X planning didn't start until after the Lisas were on the market so, it doesn't predate them even in design. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 20:30 ` Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-17 20:44 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 21:08 ` Dan Cross 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 20:44 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 17, 2017, at 1:30 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote: > > I'm not sure how you are defining the "desktop > metaphor" but Apple and Xerox had it long before X. Yeah, I think we're all using different definitions of "desktop metaphor." In my view, the early Macs (and Windows) were bitmap overlays on a single user OS. To me, a "desktop" is a much more virtual abstraction of the user's runtime environment from the underlying OS. I.e., if you can't have two distinct "users" concurrently running independent GUI environments on the same hardware, it's not a "desktop." And I realize that's a very fuzzy definition. Let me ask you this, Ron: how would you classify the Plan 9 terminal environment? :-) --lyndon ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 20:44 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 21:08 ` Dan Cross 2017-03-17 22:50 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2017-03-17 21:08 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 4:44 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > On Mar 17, 2017, at 1:30 PM, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote: > > > > I'm not sure how you are defining the "desktop > > metaphor" but Apple and Xerox had it long before X. > > Yeah, I think we're all using different definitions of "desktop metaphor." > > In my view, the early Macs (and Windows) were bitmap overlays on a single > user OS. To me, a "desktop" is a much more virtual abstraction of the > user's runtime environment from the underlying OS. I.e., if you can't have > two distinct "users" concurrently running independent GUI environments on > the same hardware, it's not a "desktop." And I realize that's a very fuzzy > definition. > Fuzzy indeed. I'm not sure I understand what you mean at all. "Desktop" tends to have a fairly consistent definition in the context of user environments: It's the graphical component of the interactive facilities of your computer/operating system combination, in the state of the user having logged in (if appropriate) and being in the process of using the machine. What does that have to do with the underlying operating system supporting multiple users with independent desktops? Let me ask you this, Ron: how would you classify the Plan 9 terminal > environment? :-) "Terminals" in the Plan 9 world are just that: terminals. They are the physical computers users use to interact with the rest of the system (to a first order approximation, Plan 9 can be thought of as being something like a "timesharing system built from a network of computers"). Of note, they tend to be single-user (modulo a few processes that may run as e.g. "none" or whatever). They tend to present the user with a GUI that I would argue is a "desktop": rio, acme, etc give one access to one's files and present an interface for accessing the underlying system. While they tend not to use the bitmapped graphical icons of other systems, I argue that limiting the definition of desktops to being characterized by icons representing objects such as files and applications while being present on the screen seems like an implementation detail and unnecessarily limiting. http://pub.gajendra.net/2016/05/plan9part1 - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170317/3641ff82/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 21:08 ` Dan Cross @ 2017-03-17 22:50 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 22:58 ` Dan Cross 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 22:50 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 17, 2017, at 2:08 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote: > > While they tend not to use the bitmapped graphical icons of other systems, I argue that limiting the definition of desktops to being characterized by icons representing objects such as files and applications while being present on the screen seems like an implementation detail and unnecessarily limiting. But I didn't say a desktop requires iconic representations of objects. I don't think the early Oberon implementations had them (but there are >20 years of memory loss between then and now). Was Oberon a desktop? Not to my mind. It was a bitmapped interface vs a text-cell-based interface to a cooperating group of programs. Conceptually I don't see any difference between Oberon and screen(1) in that regard. Would you consider screen a 'desktop'? And likewise, Oberon? I'm not asking this rhetorically. These concepts have fuzzy definitions for a lot of people, and I'm curious to see how they map out. --lyndon ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 22:50 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 22:58 ` Dan Cross 2017-03-17 23:17 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2017-03-17 22:58 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 6:50 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > On Mar 17, 2017, at 2:08 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote: > > While they tend not to use the bitmapped graphical icons of other > systems, I argue that limiting the definition of desktops to being > characterized by icons representing objects such as files and applications > while being present on the screen seems like an implementation detail and > unnecessarily limiting. > > But I didn't say a desktop requires iconic representations of objects. I > don't think the early Oberon implementations had them (but there are >20 > years of memory loss between then and now). > Sorry; I thought that's what you were saying but I was wrong. But I confess confusion. For instance, you mention Oberon here as not having graphical icons but then in the next sentence two sentences it didn't meet your definition of what a desktop is. So that sort of seems like a non sequitur. What, then, is you definition? (And I'm not asking that to be combative; I'm truly interested.) Was Oberon a desktop? Not to my mind. It was a bitmapped interface vs a > text-cell-based interface to a cooperating group of programs. Conceptually > I don't see any difference between Oberon and screen(1) in that regard. > Would you consider screen a 'desktop'? And likewise, Oberon? I'm not > asking this rhetorically. These concepts have fuzzy definitions for a lot > of people, and I'm curious to see how they map out. > I would definitely call Oberon's graphical interface a desktop (btw, the graphical sorting demo was *cool*). But I'm clearly using a different definition than you are. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170317/1f5c0672/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 22:58 ` Dan Cross @ 2017-03-17 23:17 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 23:22 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-18 15:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 0 siblings, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 23:17 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry; I thought that's what you were saying but I was wrong. But I confess confusion. For instance, you mention Oberon here as not having graphical icons but then in the next sentence two sentences it didn't meet your definition of what a desktop is. So that sort of seems like a non sequitur. What, then, is you definition? (And I'm not asking that to be combative; I'm truly interested.) Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. > I would definitely call Oberon's graphical interface a desktop (btw, the graphical sorting demo was *cool*). Oberon had many cool things! > But I'm clearly using a different definition than you are. Yes. My fault. Does "window manager" make more sense? So "desktop" in my context means something much more dynamic than "window manager." NeWS was the first example I can think of - an environment that could interpret and modify its environment in context. I'm pretty sure that predated Windows and (what became) CORBA. For me, Irix 5.2 on the Indy (circa 1993?) was the first true "desktop" environment I had hands on. --lyndon ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 23:17 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 23:22 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-18 15:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 23:22 UTC (permalink / raw) > On Mar 17, 2017, at 4:17 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: > > For me, Irix 5.2 on the Indy (circa 1993?) was the first true "desktop" environment I had hands on. And I mean this in the sense of the interactive/immersive environment. I had been hacking on bitmapped/graphical interfaces going back to 1982 or so. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 23:17 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 23:22 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-18 15:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-18 16:59 ` Andy Kosela 1 sibling, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-18 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw) Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote: |> On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote: |Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window \ |manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. Not to forget GEOS on Commodore 64, years before Windows. --steffen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-18 15:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-18 16:59 ` Andy Kosela 2017-03-18 23:05 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Andy Kosela @ 2017-03-18 16:59 UTC (permalink / raw) On Saturday, March 18, 2017, Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote: > Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca <javascript:;>> wrote: > |> On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com > <javascript:;>> wrote: > |Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window \ > |manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. > > Not to forget GEOS on Commodore 64, years before Windows. > > Actually it was not "years before Windows". Windows 1.0 was released in 1985, while GEOS for Commodore 64 in 1986. If we are talking about early "window managers" I think it is desirable to also mention early text mode window managers like PathMinder which was released before Windows, in 1984. --Andy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170318/a5db2ef6/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-18 16:59 ` Andy Kosela @ 2017-03-18 23:05 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-18 23:32 ` Nick Downing 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-18 23:05 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1260 bytes --] Andy Kosela <akosela at andykosela.com> wrote: |On Saturday, March 18, 2017, Steffen Nurpmeso <[1]steffen at sdaoden.eu[/1]> \ |wrote: |Lyndon Nerenberg <[2]lyndon at orthanc.ca[/2]> wrote: | |> On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <[3]crossd at gmail.com[/3]> wrote: | |Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window \ | |manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. | | [1] mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu | [2] javascript:; | [3] javascript:; | |Not to forget GEOS on Commodore 64, years before Windows. | |Actually it was not "years before Windows". Windows 1.0 was released in | |1985, while GEOS for Commodore 64 in 1986. If we are talking about early That is Wikipedia, but i bet i was not more than a quarter of a year. In fact i am a bit surprised, my parents divorced when i was fourteen, and i really can remember myself using GEOS proper. And then, this was all in 8-bit, 64 KB, 1 MHz! However they did that! With paint program, write program.. |"window managers" I think it is desirable to also mention early text mode | |window managers like PathMinder which was released before Windows, in | |1984. Ya, hm, i surely was a books rat at that time. --steffen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-18 23:05 ` Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-18 23:32 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-19 7:20 ` Jason Stevens 0 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Nick Downing @ 2017-03-18 23:32 UTC (permalink / raw) There was a dude who came to our school in Melbourne Australia from the United States, I would have been 13 so that makes it 1988. We had C64s and this American dude loaded GEOS onto one and started using it for a bit of stuff. We were flabbergasted as we didn't think the C64 was capable more than just Logo or a few games, I think we might have had some terrible CBM wordprocessor but GEOS kicked the pants off it. Sadly by this time we were getting PC based and there was also a Mac 512k in head teacher's office that you could use with permission. So it was not more than a novelty but I still think that GEOS is an amazing bit of kit. cheers Nick On Mar 19, 2017 10:05 AM, "Steffen Nurpmeso" <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote: > Andy Kosela <akosela at andykosela.com> wrote: > |On Saturday, March 18, 2017, Steffen Nurpmeso <[1]steffen at sdaoden.eu[/1]> > \ > |wrote: > |Lyndon Nerenberg <[2]lyndon at orthanc.ca[/2]> wrote: > | |> On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <[3]crossd at gmail.com[/3]> > wrote: > | |Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window \ > | |manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. > | > | [1] mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu > | [2] javascript:; > | [3] javascript:; > | > |Not to forget GEOS on Commodore 64, years before Windows. > | > |Actually it was not "years before Windows". Windows 1.0 was released in > | > |1985, while GEOS for Commodore 64 in 1986. If we are talking about early > > That is Wikipedia, but i bet i was not more than a quarter of > a year. In fact i am a bit surprised, my parents divorced when > i was fourteen, and i really can remember myself using GEOS > proper. And then, this was all in 8-bit, 64 KB, 1 MHz! However > they did that! With paint program, write program.. > > |"window managers" I think it is desirable to also mention early text mode > | > |window managers like PathMinder which was released before Windows, in > | > |1984. > > Ya, hm, i surely was a books rat at that time. > > --steffen > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170319/14eaad9a/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-18 23:32 ` Nick Downing @ 2017-03-19 7:20 ` Jason Stevens 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Jason Stevens @ 2017-03-19 7:20 UTC (permalink / raw) It was a very constrained environment, but it's real power was in its WYSIWYG, and it's soft fonts. I blame GEOS for making my c64 too productive as a kid as I so wanted one of those fancy 16bit machines. I ended up buying used pc parts to amass my first PC, as my parents were dead set that you could do anything on the c64, and upgrading was pointless... On March 19, 2017 7:32:39 AM GMT+08:00, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote: >There was a dude who came to our school in Melbourne Australia from the >United States, I would have been 13 so that makes it 1988. We had C64s >and this American dude loaded GEOS onto one and started using it for a >bit of stuff. We were flabbergasted as we didn't think the C64 was >capable more than just Logo or a few games, I think we might have had >some terrible CBM wordprocessor but GEOS kicked the pants off it. Sadly >by this time we were getting PC based and there was also a Mac 512k in >head teacher's office that you could use with permission. So it was not >more than a novelty but I still think that GEOS is an amazing bit of >kit. >cheers Nick > >On Mar 19, 2017 10:05 AM, "Steffen Nurpmeso" < steffen at sdaoden.eu ><mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu> > wrote: > > >Andy Kosela < akosela at andykosela.com <mailto:akosela at andykosela.com> > >wrote: > |On Saturday, March 18, 2017, Steffen Nurpmeso <[1] steffen at sdaoden.eu ><mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu> [/1]> \ > |wrote: > |Lyndon Nerenberg <[2] lyndon at orthanc.ca <mailto:lyndon at orthanc.ca> >[/2]> wrote: > | |> On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross <[3] crossd at gmail.com ><mailto:crossd at gmail.com> [/3]> wrote: > | |Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is >"window \ > | |manager." Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers. > | > | [1] mailto: steffen at sdaoden.eu <mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu> > | [2] javascript:; > | [3] javascript:; > | > |Not to forget GEOS on Commodore 64, years before Windows. > | > |Actually it was not "years before Windows". Windows 1.0 was released >in > | > |1985, while GEOS for Commodore 64 in 1986. If we are talking about >early > >That is Wikipedia, but i bet i was not more than a quarter of >a year. In fact i am a bit surprised, my parents divorced when >i was fourteen, and i really can remember myself using GEOS >proper. And then, this was all in 8-bit, 64 KB, 1 MHz! However >they did that! With paint program, write program.. > > |"window managers" I think it is desirable to also mention early text >mode > | > |window managers like PathMinder which was released before Windows, in > | > |1984. > >Ya, hm, i surely was a books rat at that time. > >--steffen -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170319/9b4243ab/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg @ 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve ` (2 more replies) 2017-03-19 6:11 ` Robert Brockway 3 siblings, 3 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2017-03-17 0:13 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:04:57AM +0100, Josh Good wrote: > On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: > > > > Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator > > too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different > > programs. > > > > It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. > > That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the > > functionality should be deleted. > > I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, > but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any > network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that > does not happen in the RDP/ICA world. I'm a huge X11 fan, use remote display all the time (I'm reading this mail on slovax.mcvoy.com but I'm on a laptop so when mutt needs to display a photo or a word doc or whatever, that's all remote X over wifi, it "works" well enough that I use it a lot). That said, whatever they did in RDP (which I'm guessing is Microsoft's remote desktop protocol?) is awesome. Way, way, way better than remote display. As Josh said, works quite well over a WAN. I've used it to get desktop access to windows machines in our build cluster and it works great (I'm in the Santa Cruz mountains and my net connection is point to point wifi to a tower, not the greatest). > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 > forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) > which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only > bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, > self-contained, GUI desktop". Huh. So is RDP better because it does bitmap to bitmap compression? > In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more > for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is > just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X, > of course). I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if that makes sense but RDP is the shit. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy @ 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve 2017-03-23 19:16 ` Michael Parson 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 14:39 ` Arthur Krewat 2 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: jsteve @ 2017-03-17 3:16 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3273 bytes --] Well there is xrdp http://www.xrdp.org/ I’ve used this to ‘terminal server-ize’ our Oracle on Linux installs, as our DBA’s were used to Oracle on Windows (I know, I know, they also used to run it on Netware....) So the upshot is that on Windows you just fire up the rdp client, and connect into the Linux machine, and it’ll greet you with a login screen, login, and you have your desktop. On the backend it’s the virtual X framebuffer, and xrdp does some vnc/mstsc type translation in the middle. It’s great for sharing out desktops, or if you have those old ‘windows terminals’ that can at least talk to a MS Terminal server. It’s incompatible with the citrix stuff, but it’s pretty cool. Sent from Mail for Windows 10 From: Larry McVoy Sent: Friday, 17 March 2017 8:14 AM To: Josh Good Cc: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:04:57AM +0100, Josh Good wrote: > On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: > > > > Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator > > too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different > > programs. > > > > It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you. > > That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the > > functionality should be deleted. > > I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, > but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any > network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that > does not happen in the RDP/ICA world. I'm a huge X11 fan, use remote display all the time (I'm reading this mail on slovax.mcvoy.com but I'm on a laptop so when mutt needs to display a photo or a word doc or whatever, that's all remote X over wifi, it "works" well enough that I use it a lot). That said, whatever they did in RDP (which I'm guessing is Microsoft's remote desktop protocol?) is awesome. Way, way, way better than remote display. As Josh said, works quite well over a WAN. I've used it to get desktop access to windows machines in our build cluster and it works great (I'm in the Santa Cruz mountains and my net connection is point to point wifi to a tower, not the greatest). > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 > forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) > which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only > bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, > self-contained, GUI desktop". Huh. So is RDP better because it does bitmap to bitmap compression? > In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more > for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is > just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X, > of course). I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if that makes sense but RDP is the shit. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170317/635f8a11/attachment-0001.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve @ 2017-03-23 19:16 ` Michael Parson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Michael Parson @ 2017-03-23 19:16 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1345 bytes --] >On Fri, 17 Mar 2017, Larry McVoy wrote: <snip> >> I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if >> that makes sense but RDP is the shit. On Fri, 17 Mar 2017, jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com wrote: > Well there is xrdp > http://www.xrdp.org/ I'm a fan of this project. > I’ve used this to ‘terminal server-ize’ our Oracle on Linux > installs, as our DBA’s were used to Oracle on Windows (I know, I > know, they also used to run it on Netware....) So the upshot is that > on Windows you just fire up the rdp client, and connect into the Linux > machine, and it’ll greet you with a login screen, login, and you > have your desktop. On the backend it’s the virtual X framebuffer, > and xrdp does some vnc/mstsc type translation in the middle. I'd describe xrdp as a VNC client that you connect to via RDP. > It’s great for sharing out desktops, or if you have those old > ‘windows terminals’ that can at least talk to a MS Terminal > server. It’s incompatible with the citrix stuff, but it’s pretty > cool. For whole-desktop sharing, yes, it's very nice. Occasionally I try and come up with ways to share a single app with it, to avoid the issue where a network hiccup kills the app and you lose work. Copious spare time and all that... -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX KF5LGQ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve @ 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 12:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 16:49 ` Tony Finch 2017-03-17 14:39 ` Arthur Krewat 2 siblings, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-17 12:39 UTC (permalink / raw) Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote: |On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:04:57AM +0100, Josh Good wrote: |> On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote: |>> Your usage habits are not natural laws. I'm a systems administrator |>> too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different |>> programs. ... |> I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links, ... |I'm a huge X11 fan, use remote display all the time (I'm reading this |mail on slovax.mcvoy.com but I'm on a laptop so when mutt needs to |display a photo or a word doc or whatever, that's all remote X over |wifi, it "works" well enough that I use it a lot). And it makes it possible to run browsers in a separate KVM into which you log in with X11 forwarding enabled, for very insecure things, and if your machine is strong enough. Matthew Dillon of DragonflyBSD posted[1] a nice recipe of separating privileges via several different user accounts on the same machine (as in "ssh dfw1 at localhost -n \"setenv DISPLAY :0.0; firefox\""), onto which i added the additional KVM separation; a pain on my small box with todays internet, however. But possible. And i am hoping for improved virtual graphics, they are working on that! --steffen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-17 12:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 16:49 ` Tony Finch 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-17 12:45 UTC (permalink / raw) ... |things, and if your machine is strong enough. Matthew Dillon of |DragonflyBSD posted[1] a nice recipe of separating privileges via |several different user accounts on the same machine (as in "ssh |dfw1 at localhost -n \"setenv DISPLAY :0.0; firefox\""), onto ... Sorry, i had forgotten the link, it is [1] http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2015-August/291195.html --steffen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 12:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-17 16:49 ` Tony Finch 2017-03-18 15:43 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 1 sibling, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Tony Finch @ 2017-03-17 16:49 UTC (permalink / raw) Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote: > > And it makes it possible to run browsers in a separate KVM into > which you log in with X11 forwarding enabled, for very insecure > things, and if your machine is strong enough. Nice! If you want a less-DIY more-packaged version of this idea, have a look at https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/ Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot at dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ - I xn--zr8h punycode Trafalgar: Easterly or northeasterly 5 to 7, occasionally gale 8 in southeast. Moderate or rough, occasionally very rough in southeast. Thundery showers. Good, occasionally poor. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 16:49 ` Tony Finch @ 2017-03-18 15:43 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-18 15:43 UTC (permalink / raw) Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote: |Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen at sdaoden.eu> wrote: |> And it makes it possible to run browsers in a separate KVM into |> which you log in with X11 forwarding enabled, for very insecure |> things, and if your machine is strong enough. | |Nice! If you want a less-DIY more-packaged version of this idea, have a Indeed there was also a nice thing on VDE2 which i searched but could not find, so i posted the second best i remembered.. ^.^ |look at https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/ This sent me on an interesting journey, reiterating all the Xen / KVM / etc. things, and which lead me to Librem, and i think i will participate in one of the next batches of a Librem 13 -- i still haven't replaced my main machine that died more than one and half a year ago. I wanted to go Zenbook for quite some time (ever since), but this indeed looks very nice, too. Yes, the Xen hypervisor approach is more like the supercomputer compartments that some of the members of this list know about. But, you know, if possible i really want to avoid such a huge installation as a base system, i would prefer a small NanoBSD, or a minimal-installation Linux (because i am a loser and prefer a very good performing base system with binary security update support), say, nothing more than the kernel, iptables, iproute2, VDE2, qemu (minimal), openssl and openssh. And it needs X. And i have found out that AlpineLinux offers a Xen Dom0 installation image: likely that it ships with Python preinstalled, and Python and me is no-no-no. (If at all avoidable, that is.) KVM/Qemu you can drive with a few shell scripts. You know, i am so undecided. If someone would come around with a modern mobile phone with a quad-processor and say 8GB RAM (free) and a "Lapdock-station" that has a good keyboard and monitor, and the possibility to boot a "normal" operating system "directly via KVM/xy" (when plugging in), then i really would be satisfied. I/O performance is what counts for me -- and here SSD and a virtual machine with dedicated partition is much better than anything i ever had before! --, CPU power i miss only when compiling, but having four or even eight truly parallel threads would surely make this acceptable -- i am used to two-core 1.4 GHz Core 2... Yet of course noone will mix the markets of phones and laptops. And what do you mean by DIY? Isn't it a pretty common abstraction to have several users with different privileges? It must be doable, of course -- if i recall correctly, switching users on a Mac freezes anything of the current user, for example, and the graphical firewall tool either allows ssh or not, so that the scenario shown wouldn't even work (when using the Mac-GUI-provided ways of doing things). --steffen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso @ 2017-03-17 14:39 ` Arthur Krewat 2017-03-17 16:21 ` Larry McVoy 2 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Arthur Krewat @ 2017-03-17 14:39 UTC (permalink / raw) On 3/16/2017 8:13 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if > that makes sense but RDP is the shit. Check out VNC - you run a "server" on the remote side, and the VNC client on the client side. The advantage is that everything you run stays running on the remote side. I use this setup all the time for a security-conscious Fortune 100 company I consult for, as well as personally. Now, of course, it can be argued that VNC has it's security problems, some of which stem from X11 itself. For example, I can't tell you how many people do an "xhost +" either manually or (to my horror) in .vnc/xstartup - But that's X11's problem not VNC. Add "ssh -X" to all of this. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 14:39 ` Arthur Krewat @ 2017-03-17 16:21 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 16:29 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-17 17:42 ` Steve Nickolas 0 siblings, 2 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Larry McVoy @ 2017-03-17 16:21 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 10:39:21AM -0400, Arthur Krewat wrote: > > On 3/16/2017 8:13 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > >I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if > >that makes sense but RDP is the shit. > > Check out VNC - you run a "server" on the remote side, and the VNC client on > the client side. The advantage is that everything you run stays running on > the remote side. Unless VNC has evolved it's just nowhere near as snappy as RDP. Can anyone speak to that? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 16:21 ` Larry McVoy @ 2017-03-17 16:29 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-17 17:42 ` Steve Nickolas 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-17 16:29 UTC (permalink / raw) On 17 Mar 2017, at 16:21, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote: > > Unless VNC has evolved it's just nowhere near as snappy as RDP. Can anyone > speak to that? There are variants of the protocol and some of the commercial clients & servers were significantly faster than the original one, but my impression was that RDP was better. VNC doesn't do anything like the same job as X of course: any screen-or-window-image-shipping protocol like that would need an enormous amount of extra baggage on the side of it to do so. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170317/164a8894/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-17 16:21 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 16:29 ` Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-17 17:42 ` Steve Nickolas 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Steve Nickolas @ 2017-03-17 17:42 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, 17 Mar 2017, Larry McVoy wrote: > On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 10:39:21AM -0400, Arthur Krewat wrote: >> >> On 3/16/2017 8:13 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: >>> I'd be stoked if X11 had an RDP extension or something. I have no idea if >>> that makes sense but RDP is the shit. >> >> Check out VNC - you run a "server" on the remote side, and the VNC client on >> the client side. The advantage is that everything you run stays running on >> the remote side. > > Unless VNC has evolved it's just nowhere near as snappy as RDP. Can anyone > speak to that? > I use X redirection to run some apps, but it can get dog slow with anything involving rich bitmaps. I use VNC to remote into my Linux boxen and my neighbor's PC for quick tech assistance. Again, terrible choice for anything involving bitmaps, but it's a bit better for apps that use non-system fonts. I use RDP for accessing my friend's encoding rig (Win10). Still dog-slow for bitmap stuff, but for anything else it's fast as hell even when the latency of the Internet is taken into consideration. For stuff that may require working with graphical previews (such as trimming videos for remote encoding) I use NX. -uso. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy @ 2017-03-19 6:11 ` Robert Brockway 2017-03-19 11:56 ` Josh Good 3 siblings, 1 reply; 48+ messages in thread From: Robert Brockway @ 2017-03-19 6:11 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, 17 Mar 2017, Josh Good wrote: > The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 > forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) > which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only > bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, > self-contained, GUI desktop". Personally I've always strongly preferred that remote apps display on the same desktop as local apps. This offers seemless integration, especially if the various servers share /home. Putting remote apps in a box always struck me as klunky. Different people prefer each of these approaches and there is no need to force everyone in to one solution. Losing the ability to remote display individual apps would be a great leap backwards for me, and for lots of others. FWIW I believe RDP does support per app remote display. Cheers, Rob ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-19 6:11 ` Robert Brockway @ 2017-03-19 11:56 ` Josh Good 0 siblings, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Josh Good @ 2017-03-19 11:56 UTC (permalink / raw) On 2017 Mar 19, 16:11, Robert Brockway wrote: > On Fri, 17 Mar 2017, Josh Good wrote: > > >The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11 > >forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever) > >which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only > >bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full, > >self-contained, GUI desktop". > > Personally I've always strongly preferred that remote apps display on the > same desktop as local apps. This offers seemless integration, especially > if the various servers share /home. > > Putting remote apps in a box always struck me as klunky. Remoting single GUI apps can be useful in a scientific workstation and similar settings (for example, managing some turbine in a power plant, etc.). But remoting full, integrated desktop environments is more useful for clerical office work and for remote administration of GUI-based operating systems, or for remote administration of some workflow which involves several GUI applications in a tool-chain kind of workflow. IMHO. -- Josh Good ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like 2017-03-15 1:13 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 10:15 ` Tim Bradshaw @ 2017-03-15 20:48 ` Ron Natalie 1 sibling, 0 replies; 48+ messages in thread From: Ron Natalie @ 2017-03-15 20:48 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1175 bytes --] Well, I’m not even going to get into the deficiencies of Microsoft, I spent the last twenty years of my life beating head against those. DLL hell did not go away with the common runtime environment, the solution was a giant kludge. The one thing I have to say about the common runtime framework is it makes so much sense it’s amazing that Microsoft came up with it…want to link programs together…just put them in the same directory. Very UNIX like in philosophy. Don’t get me started about GDI+…makes a lot of sense but it is inordinately slower than the legacy system and the font processing is a joke, nowhere near as complete as the original. Anyhow MS Windows sucks as badly as you blame X. You have to reach deep into it’s guts to get performance out of it as well. Also, while you think all the world’s a workstation, a lot of industry is going the other way and you find out had bad Windows sucks at remote application running when any performance is required. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170315/a1e6ac2a/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 48+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2017-03-23 19:16 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 48+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2017-03-17 15:39 [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like Noel Chiappa 2017-03-17 17:56 ` Ron Natalie -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 2017-03-17 13:05 Noel Chiappa 2017-03-17 15:06 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-14 18:49 Ron Natalie [not found] ` <CAH1jEzY5g6zGSxsXEHc+Q7mYyegU+aSr-zpfJ0cwRfSGSUdgCg@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzb7eSr0xcoBX8bfzL6batBfxOF+8jhbVFs=x1CFWAJ65g@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzY38dmbASRLMrQnoX0-eANA0YBW=j=LLC1y1axi=672yg@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzbYS8fJgNGFMa+2SoLUWCQQAxVSuxrZp-z2uunXS+R8GQ@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEza89JHeTZBQ6y_wvu7iVjW+qV2_Ucg1gWbWnhG2Jc9rLg@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzaZxATj5BPu2+d213PpUQqH8Q0LnA2syXxCm4LvpXPqYg@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEza6NO3UcZsR4foQwqFosJWRdYCn5FQfxDy596Nj_+SKdA@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzYK04=fDQ8FAu2PvKS=heZK_Da=LB=cQ4g9nZybM-DsMA@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzYMRu_e4Az1+Ns7JA0K5FUjRCrvjOkWVC85WodtLaB52g@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzZQXAS+bwqV76J8_WkUD-3tR7P_z-mQrRkFv-Khm-R4Eg@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzY2L1k4_QNUFtscovpD1_gORPRVY_=n47dmBY3fh=JUXA@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEza5F4oyQ8bByypWevLW3RwZ4Q4Zfz-roiGi5ksyGup9Zw@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzb9Rv+iER45NSCGfFerrXaD1v8PN=j92iOg7oU=4q62Rw@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEzav9Y0vM75GaVqVBj=0nXmjdjucF+mx=FBkRO4QP8Soeg@mail.gmail.com> 2017-03-15 1:13 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 10:15 ` Tim Bradshaw [not found] ` <CAH1jEzb7tKSa5H_k-pCT_7x6xzJHdavm4dZySnhkmYL7WG2HEA@mail.gmail.com> [not found] ` <CAH1jEza9jmb09SDvQi5cQV_g6oO97dgx-VsQobMG=RddqRBxsA@mail.gmail.com> 2017-03-15 11:03 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 12:03 ` tfb 2017-03-15 13:12 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-15 14:37 ` tfb 2017-03-15 16:40 ` Kurt H Maier 2017-03-15 16:52 ` Arthur Krewat 2017-03-16 23:04 ` Josh Good 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Robert Swierczek 2017-03-17 1:15 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-16 23:29 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 0:05 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 5:55 ` arnold 2017-03-17 12:56 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-17 15:19 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-17 20:17 ` Josh Good 2017-03-17 20:30 ` Ron Natalie 2017-03-17 20:44 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 21:08 ` Dan Cross 2017-03-17 22:50 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 22:58 ` Dan Cross 2017-03-17 23:17 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-17 23:22 ` Lyndon Nerenberg 2017-03-18 15:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-18 16:59 ` Andy Kosela 2017-03-18 23:05 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-18 23:32 ` Nick Downing 2017-03-19 7:20 ` Jason Stevens 2017-03-17 0:13 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 3:16 ` jsteve 2017-03-23 19:16 ` Michael Parson 2017-03-17 12:39 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 12:45 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 16:49 ` Tony Finch 2017-03-18 15:43 ` Steffen Nurpmeso 2017-03-17 14:39 ` Arthur Krewat 2017-03-17 16:21 ` Larry McVoy 2017-03-17 16:29 ` Tim Bradshaw 2017-03-17 17:42 ` Steve Nickolas 2017-03-19 6:11 ` Robert Brockway 2017-03-19 11:56 ` Josh Good 2017-03-15 20:48 ` Ron Natalie
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