17 Mar
2017
17 Mar
'17
12:29 a.m.
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(a)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