3 ms·

I’m also interested in hearing GPs thoughts on rdp and x.

• jacquesm 7y ago
  In a nutshell: RDP is a good way to access remote systems that are running a window manager of sorts, X is a good way to have remote clients connect to a local X server (the display). RDP is more closely related to VNC and something like 'screen' than X, which is more like a networked resource that you can access through remote clients. RDP is an application sharing protocol, X is a screen sharing protocol, the two are radically different from each other which gives each advantages and disadvantages that the other lacks and a bunch of overlap. Most notably, with X security was bolted on as an afterthought. RDP, originally reading the screen contents and sending those over (compressed) does not allow for much interaction with what gets sent over, it is rather low level whereas X sends over display primitives. Again, X's initial - rather naive - implementation made a ton of assumptions because the original implementors had nice fat workstations and fast networks to work with and so the real-world utility of these features was rather limited. Anyway, you could write books about this and not get all the details, besides the various implementations of both but all that there is to this is that due to their history and intended application the two are very different beasts and X offers a versatility that not a whole lot of people need but when you need that versatility you need it badly.