From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: rmswierczek@gmail.com (Robert Swierczek) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2017 19:29:23 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like In-Reply-To: <20170316230455.GA21805@naleco.com> References: <4227EA32-12C2-46D1-B683-88812D1E5168@tfeb.org> <3B3776C9-1B22-4143-A4F5-0BEA13C79505@tfeb.org> <20170315164006.GC26286@wopr> <20170316230455.GA21805@naleco.com> Message-ID: 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 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 >