5 ms·

> I've never in my life seen this "tearing" that people keep complaining about. Here's one data point: It has caused endless troubles on a digital signage proj

by senko 10y ago

> I've never in my life seen this "tearing" that people keep complaining about. Here's one data point: It has caused endless troubles on a digital signage project I worked on a couple of years ago. Having a proper solution then would save us tons of hours trying various workarounds to minimize the effect (while at the same time having decent performance). On the other hand, the last time I (successfully) used X's network transparency was back in '98 on a couple of Sun workstations (when I had access -- most of the time it was VT220 instead :) Since then, every time I did try it, I ended up regretting it since the bandwidth and the latency were too poor for any sane usage (VNC ended up working way better). Which is not to say networked X is not valuable -- just that it's misleading to think you're (or myself, for that matter) a typical user.

derefr 10y ago
As you say, anything networked X can do, VNC can do better. I can't help but think, though, that the arrangement we have now—where VNC servers on ⋆nix are implemented in terms of being a sort of pixbuf caching proxy for the local X server—is actually a nice, optimal arrangement that allows for a good separation of concerns. It's a bit like Mapbox: you've got a database full of semantic geometry state that applications can poke (the X server), and then you've got a fronting daemon that renders, serves, and caches graphical "tiles" created by querying that geometry (the VNC server), along with exposing a protocol through which clients can easily poke at the database by referring to it in terms of the tile-server's screen coordinates. Also, other people might say it's clumsy, but personally I really enjoy the architecture of containerized GUI apps: you've got xvfb running in the container as an X server, and then x11vnc or the like also running in there, talking to xvfb, serving VNC "tiles" and receiving key and pointer inputs over a socket. It's like the OSI network layers: X11 is the application layer, VNC is the presentation layer.
- bandrami 10y ago
  anything networked X can do, VNC can do better VNC does single window clients which interact with the primary and secondary selections on the display server now?
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Since then, every time I did try it, I ended up regretting it since the bandwidth and the latency were too poor for any sane usage (VNC ended up working way better)." I agree, in my experience VNC has given better performance than X through the standard network transparency feature. If you have the need for a remote desktop setup in the future, I'd recommend checking out NoMachine. It's closed-source, but from what I've seen so far it offers better performance than VNC. https://www.nomachine.com/ https://www.nomachine.com/
- effie 10y ago
  There is also open-source software for this, such as https://xpra.org/ https://xpra.org/
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Are there any benchmarks you know of that compare Xpra with NoMachine?
    - effie 10y ago
      I don't know any except my subjective experience with Xpra and pure X forwarding. Xpra was a little cumbersome to setup and use. Some programs benefited a lot from using it (Firefox), some actually got less responsive (Geany). This was roughly one year ago, so it's possible Xpra got better since then.

by senko 10y ago

derefr 10y ago

As you say, anything networked X can do, VNC can do better. I can't help but think, though, that the arrangement we have now—where VNC servers on ⋆nix are implemented in terms of being a sort of pixbuf caching proxy for the local X server—is actually a nice, optimal arrangement that allows for a good separation of concerns. It's a bit like Mapbox: you've got a database full of semantic geometry state that applications can poke (the X server), and then you've got a fronting daemon that renders, serves, and caches graphical "tiles" created by querying that geometry (the VNC server), along with exposing a protocol through which clients can easily poke at the database by referring to it in terms of the tile-server's screen coordinates. Also, other people might say it's clumsy, but personally I really enjoy the architecture of containerized GUI apps: you've got xvfb running in the container as an X server, and then x11vnc or the like also running in there, talking to xvfb, serving VNC "tiles" and receiving key and pointer inputs over a socket. It's like the OSI network layers: X11 is the application layer, VNC is the presentation layer.

bandrami 10y ago
anything networked X can do, VNC can do better VNC does single window clients which interact with the primary and secondary selections on the display server now?

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "Since then, every time I did try it, I ended up regretting it since the bandwidth and the latency were too poor for any sane usage (VNC ended up working way better)." I agree, in my experience VNC has given better performance than X through the standard network transparency feature. If you have the need for a remote desktop setup in the future, I'd recommend checking out NoMachine. It's closed-source, but from what I've seen so far it offers better performance than VNC. https://www.nomachine.com/ https://www.nomachine.com/

effie 10y ago
There is also open-source software for this, such as https://xpra.org/ https://xpra.org/
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Are there any benchmarks you know of that compare Xpra with NoMachine?
  - effie 10y ago
    I don't know any except my subjective experience with Xpra and pure X forwarding. Xpra was a little cumbersome to setup and use. Some programs benefited a lot from using it (Firefox), some actually got less responsive (Geany). This was roughly one year ago, so it's possible Xpra got better since then.