4 ms·

Everyone probably already knows this, but enabling compression (-C) makes running remote X programs more usable over slower connections.

by xioxox 6y ago

asdff 6y ago
Changing the cipher supposedly helps, too. Probably placebo though.
- xioxox 6y ago
  There's no supposedly for me using compression. I just checked - it consistently takes 3x longer to launch an xterm without compression than with compression (15 vs 45s!).
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  That's obsolete advice: could have helped 10+ years ago...
Piskvorrr 6y ago
And while we're at it, if you need remote X, consider Xpra instead of ssh -X - it's way faster, can survive connection drops, and is far more flexible.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I've not heard of that, is it like VNC?
  - Piskvorrr 6y ago
    The best metaphor is "tmux for X programs": the X server runs on the same host as the X programs, xpra then "forwards" the windows over a configurable transport (e.g. via SSH) to the client. X was IIRC intended for local networks, so forwarding it over the Internet is sloooow (both by verbose protocol and naive latency handling) - this takes care of both issues. IIRC it's written in Python, so it runs in most places: https://xpra.org/ https://xpra.org/
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Not a bad tip, but using gzip compression over the wire seems pretty stone-age. The proper solution is surely to use a modern lossy video-compression algorithm. Is that possible with X? It's not something I know a lot about. Is this where VNC steps in?
- lucb1e 6y ago
  I don't know much about it, but I'm fairly sure that compressing the Xorg data stream with lossy compression is going to mess it up completely and would require a complete overhaul of the protocol to make that work. VNC is indeed the more standard unix thing (insofar as remote GUIs can be considered standard on unix-likes) that applies lossy compression to the pictures being sent over.
- xioxox 6y ago
  x2go and xpra allow some lossy compression algorithms.
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  > ... using gzip compression over the wire seems pretty stone-age. Really? Probably half of all web servers on the Internet (using HTTP/1.1) use it. > The proper solution is surely to use a modern lossy video-compression algorithm. The X11 protocol doesn't send bitmaps so I'm not certain that a "lossy video-compression algorithm" is gonna have the effect you think it will.

Everyone probably already knows this, but enabling compression (-C) makes running remote X programs more usable over slower connections.

by xioxox 6y ago

Everyone probably already knows this, but enabling compression (-C) makes running remote X programs more usable over slower connections.

asdff 6y ago

Changing the cipher supposedly helps, too. Probably placebo though.

xioxox 6y ago
There's no supposedly for me using compression. I just checked - it consistently takes 3x longer to launch an xterm without compression than with compression (15 vs 45s!).
Piskvorrr 6y ago
That's obsolete advice: could have helped 10+ years ago...

Piskvorrr 6y ago

And while we're at it, if you need remote X, consider Xpra instead of ssh -X - it's way faster, can survive connection drops, and is far more flexible.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I've not heard of that, is it like VNC?
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  The best metaphor is "tmux for X programs": the X server runs on the same host as the X programs, xpra then "forwards" the windows over a configurable transport (e.g. via SSH) to the client. X was IIRC intended for local networks, so forwarding it over the Internet is sloooow (both by verbose protocol and naive latency handling) - this takes care of both issues. IIRC it's written in Python, so it runs in most places: https://xpra.org/ https://xpra.org/

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Not a bad tip, but using gzip compression over the wire seems pretty stone-age. The proper solution is surely to use a modern lossy video-compression algorithm. Is that possible with X? It's not something I know a lot about. Is this where VNC steps in?

lucb1e 6y ago
I don't know much about it, but I'm fairly sure that compressing the Xorg data stream with lossy compression is going to mess it up completely and would require a complete overhaul of the protocol to make that work. VNC is indeed the more standard unix thing (insofar as remote GUIs can be considered standard on unix-likes) that applies lossy compression to the pictures being sent over.
xioxox 6y ago
x2go and xpra allow some lossy compression algorithms.
jlgaddis 6y ago
> ... using gzip compression over the wire seems pretty stone-age. Really? Probably half of all web servers on the Internet (using HTTP/1.1) use it. > The proper solution is surely to use a modern lossy video-compression algorithm. The X11 protocol doesn't send bitmaps so I'm not certain that a "lossy video-compression algorithm" is gonna have the effect you think it will.