12 ms·

Awingu: Simpler Citrix alternative

16 points by xz18r 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago
I understand why things like Citrix and Awingu need to exist, but I hate using them. Applications just don't work well with that much latency between the keyboard and the display. Unfortunately, once a company has something like this, they use it like a crutch to solve problems that are better solved the right way. I saw a setup where people were forced to develop software over Citrix because of some mumble/security/mumble reason. Meaning everything via Citrix: IDE, browsers, test tools, terminal session, and so on. The productivity was atrocious.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  I am with you but have to see the other side as well. I am SUPER sensitive to latency. When things are slow, it just feels broken to me. But, I worked at a really successful company where everything happened in an Amazon Workspace and despite the annoyances, the place was productive and in particular, transitioned seamlessly to WFH with Covid. Seen a lot of other places like that. So yeah it's annoying but you can't just look at the cons without the pros.
- senectus1 5y ago
  yeah, WFH and closeness to data means citrix is a necessary evil. But yeah i work as hard as i can to try and find ways to NOT use citrix.
- osigurdson 5y ago
  I've used Citrix every day since the pandemic started. I don't see any issue with it at all really on Windows using standard HD resolution (two monitors). It is quite a different story on my 5K iMac however. The latency of that setup is too much for me.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I'm not surprised it works well for some. But, there are lots of variables around distance, client hardware, home user bandwidth, etc. I imagine it's a pretty rare setup to have most users happy.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    It all depends on connection and encode/decode speed. I have been working atop Windows Virtual Desktop (RDP based) for the past two years and it works beautifully on a 3-monitor setup (5K iMac plus dual 4K external monitors). I do have a fiber connection, but the entire setup is good enough to have Teams calls over redirected devices (video is laggy, but voice works OK).
- rcarmo 5y ago
  Well, I’m a small sample size, but I actually prefer to RDP over to a development workstation and not have my own CPU clogged with builds. Then again, I do have a fast connection, and have long learned to tweak some things that make a massive difference (you don’t need 32bit color to code, for instance). It’s a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused if you just use it to beat down nails without some forethought…
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lost_soul 5y ago
The best use I have seen for Citrix et al is in environments where multiple users will use the same computer during the day. Especially useful with RFid authentication.
jordanbeiber 5y ago
Fun fact: the Citrix remote desktop product, whatever it’s called these days, was initially a unix product. I seem to remember the company was called a more unixy “Citus” early on. Spent a few years working there with customers using it on solaris and eventually linux as well.
- silisili 5y ago
  Close, it was actually shortly called Citrus, due to its Florida roots I presume. They renamed to Citrix using citrus + unix.
  - jordanbeiber 5y ago
    Typoed the “r”! I remembered almost correctly then - something about it having unix roots. :)
- ksm 5y ago
  Not really, it was to bring Unix style multi-user remote terminal capability to DOS / OS/2 world. Here's an interesting article on installing v1 of their product (on the same site there's follow-up articles on v2 of the Multiuser) - which builds on very early MS version of OS/2: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/11/17/installing-using-citrix-multiuser-v1-0-bochs/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/11/17/installing-usi...
  - jordanbeiber 5y ago
    What I meant is that the backend - i.e the workspace/terminal delivered was a unix one with a client for OS/2. I helped manage many solaris servers running citrix metaframe at one point, many years ago.
anonisimportant 5y ago
I remember using NX NoMachine way back in the day in a Linux lab and thinking about how that could replace a lot of what Citrix did back in the day. NX never really took off and is now somewhat obscure. I rarely see it mentioned anywhere!
silisili 5y ago
I feel like it should be better titled(on the site) as a Citrix Workspace alternative. They are a pretty big company with a wide portfolio. Or is Workspace all they are known for anymore?
hughrr 5y ago
Complexity and price are not the problems with Citrix or any VDI solution. The whole concept doesn’t work. I have spent years and years dealing with miserable staff who have to sit on the end of a mucked up, crawling semi paralysed Citrix deployment because someone ticked a corporate IT box and got a pat on the back of it. They literally have their potential productivity halved on a good day. Not to mention the pain of trying to get some desktop software I’ve pushed out to standard windows machines fine working with some fucked up implementation of partial profile redirection that some MSP thought was a fantastic idea. Really 99% of Citrix and terminal installs I see these days are box ticking and a false promise of cost savings through density and centralisation. The end story is an end user trying to use a LOB app in chrome with about 200Mb of RAM at their disposal with the CPU and IO rammed at 100% while the MSP who sold them this pile sells them the lie that it’s the LOB vendor who’s at fault. Edit: AWS Workspaces is just as bad. It’s like working with oven gloves on after a heavy night drinking.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  All the HTML5/canvas clients are pretty much stopgaps for light use. Only a native client will give you a decent experience, since ICA/RDP etc. needs proper hardware access to accelerate rendering, and a canvas in Chrome just isn’t it.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    yep agree. But why deploy LOB SaaS browser applications on Citrix? It doesn’t add up.
    - rcarmo 5y ago
      It’s typically about control and auditing. You can record entire sessions, for instance, and limit the ability to scrape sensitive customer data. The list goes on and on if you have a security mindset.
      - hughrr 5y ago
        I’ve seen that promoted but never implemented or used successfully. As for data exfiltration I’ve worked in the defence sector in IT which has pretty stringent security controls in place. At the same time it’s very easy to do without much effort. The key thing with this technology is box ticking to say you have a policy in place and to avoid liability, not to solve the problem effectively. This is only done through picking ethical, rigorous and professional staff. But that doesn’t scale because they are the 1% which is the real problem. So back to liability box ticking.
mgiampapa 5y ago
From and enterprise perspective Citrix is very inexpensive compared to most other VDI platforms. It's not that hard to maintain and keep a farm running well if you limit your application deployment to me office and run your weird stuff on small app specific farms.
- imagine99 5y ago
  Can I ask what other platforms you have in mind that have feature parity with Citrix (more or less) but have even less attractive price points or are more convoluted to set up? I mean there are only like three or four major players in this field that I can think of and at least two of them are definitely easier and cheaper than Citrix (for VMware it is also true if you already have a vSphere infrastructure anyway)...
  - mgiampapa 5y ago
    VMware is stupidly complex when it comes to management and deployment infra. I found Citrix far simplier and about 10x less expensive (particularly because it has much higher user density than a whole VM), but I'm also a few years distant from the VDI space.
aitchnyu 5y ago
My wish would be crisper text. The compression doesnt look optimised for text. And the latency between US and India is too high, IT should be able to launch machines close to users in a single click. Github codespaces should have more than 4 zones.
imagine99 5y ago
Looks potentially interesting and I might check it out. At first glance, a few caveats and potential deal breakers occurred to me from a non-technical perspective: - the 14-day trial (PoC'ing something like this in anything less than 8 weeks is just not something that happens in my experience, especially if upper management is involved and you still need to build the infrastructure around it) - lack of lab licenses for free or cheap (I'd want to put that through its paces myself for a significant amount of time and dogfood it before recommending this to clients or moving over a large org) - seeing 20 or 50 licenses min. purchase requirement is particularly disappointing when positioning yourself as a Citrix alternative. There is a ton of small outfits in niche industries out there with a requirement of 5 to 15 seats who might jump at this if it performs well. - lack of attractive education and non-profit pricing which, again, might be a particularly thankful and interested target audience. VDI is awesome, flexible and efficient if it performs well and is done right. Unfortunately in practice too often neither is the case. However the concept's potential still has a future if it sees further improvement and innovation. Cloud gaming, among others, shows that algorithms and tech stacks exist that can make this happen.

16 points by xz18r 5y ago

I understand why things like Citrix and Awingu need to exist, but I hate using them. Applications just don't work well with that much latency between the keyboard and the display. Unfortunately, once a company has something like this, they use it like a crutch to solve problems that are better solved the right way. I saw a setup where people were forced to develop software over Citrix because of some mumble/security/mumble reason. Meaning everything via Citrix: IDE, browsers, test tools, terminal session, and so on. The productivity was atrocious.

xyzelement 5y ago
I am with you but have to see the other side as well. I am SUPER sensitive to latency. When things are slow, it just feels broken to me. But, I worked at a really successful company where everything happened in an Amazon Workspace and despite the annoyances, the place was productive and in particular, transitioned seamlessly to WFH with Covid. Seen a lot of other places like that. So yeah it's annoying but you can't just look at the cons without the pros.
senectus1 5y ago
yeah, WFH and closeness to data means citrix is a necessary evil. But yeah i work as hard as i can to try and find ways to NOT use citrix.
osigurdson 5y ago
I've used Citrix every day since the pandemic started. I don't see any issue with it at all really on Windows using standard HD resolution (two monitors). It is quite a different story on my 5K iMac however. The latency of that setup is too much for me.
- tyingq 5y ago
  I'm not surprised it works well for some. But, there are lots of variables around distance, client hardware, home user bandwidth, etc. I imagine it's a pretty rare setup to have most users happy.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  It all depends on connection and encode/decode speed. I have been working atop Windows Virtual Desktop (RDP based) for the past two years and it works beautifully on a 3-monitor setup (5K iMac plus dual 4K external monitors). I do have a fiber connection, but the entire setup is good enough to have Teams calls over redirected devices (video is laggy, but voice works OK).
rcarmo 5y ago
Well, I’m a small sample size, but I actually prefer to RDP over to a development workstation and not have my own CPU clogged with builds. Then again, I do have a fast connection, and have long learned to tweak some things that make a massive difference (you don’t need 32bit color to code, for instance). It’s a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused if you just use it to beat down nails without some forethought…

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lost_soul 5y ago

The best use I have seen for Citrix et al is in environments where multiple users will use the same computer during the day. Especially useful with RFid authentication.

jordanbeiber 5y ago

Fun fact: the Citrix remote desktop product, whatever it’s called these days, was initially a unix product. I seem to remember the company was called a more unixy “Citus” early on. Spent a few years working there with customers using it on solaris and eventually linux as well.

silisili 5y ago
Close, it was actually shortly called Citrus, due to its Florida roots I presume. They renamed to Citrix using citrus + unix.
- jordanbeiber 5y ago
  Typoed the “r”! I remembered almost correctly then - something about it having unix roots. :)
ksm 5y ago
Not really, it was to bring Unix style multi-user remote terminal capability to DOS / OS/2 world. Here's an interesting article on installing v1 of their product (on the same site there's follow-up articles on v2 of the Multiuser) - which builds on very early MS version of OS/2: https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/11/17/installing-using-citrix-multiuser-v1-0-bochs/ https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/11/17/installing-usi...
- jordanbeiber 5y ago
  What I meant is that the backend - i.e the workspace/terminal delivered was a unix one with a client for OS/2. I helped manage many solaris servers running citrix metaframe at one point, many years ago.

anonisimportant 5y ago

I remember using NX NoMachine way back in the day in a Linux lab and thinking about how that could replace a lot of what Citrix did back in the day. NX never really took off and is now somewhat obscure. I rarely see it mentioned anywhere!

silisili 5y ago

I feel like it should be better titled(on the site) as a Citrix Workspace alternative. They are a pretty big company with a wide portfolio. Or is Workspace all they are known for anymore?

hughrr 5y ago

Complexity and price are not the problems with Citrix or any VDI solution. The whole concept doesn’t work. I have spent years and years dealing with miserable staff who have to sit on the end of a mucked up, crawling semi paralysed Citrix deployment because someone ticked a corporate IT box and got a pat on the back of it. They literally have their potential productivity halved on a good day. Not to mention the pain of trying to get some desktop software I’ve pushed out to standard windows machines fine working with some fucked up implementation of partial profile redirection that some MSP thought was a fantastic idea. Really 99% of Citrix and terminal installs I see these days are box ticking and a false promise of cost savings through density and centralisation. The end story is an end user trying to use a LOB app in chrome with about 200Mb of RAM at their disposal with the CPU and IO rammed at 100% while the MSP who sold them this pile sells them the lie that it’s the LOB vendor who’s at fault. Edit: AWS Workspaces is just as bad. It’s like working with oven gloves on after a heavy night drinking.

rcarmo 5y ago
All the HTML5/canvas clients are pretty much stopgaps for light use. Only a native client will give you a decent experience, since ICA/RDP etc. needs proper hardware access to accelerate rendering, and a canvas in Chrome just isn’t it.
- hughrr 5y ago
  yep agree. But why deploy LOB SaaS browser applications on Citrix? It doesn’t add up.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    It’s typically about control and auditing. You can record entire sessions, for instance, and limit the ability to scrape sensitive customer data. The list goes on and on if you have a security mindset.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      I’ve seen that promoted but never implemented or used successfully. As for data exfiltration I’ve worked in the defence sector in IT which has pretty stringent security controls in place. At the same time it’s very easy to do without much effort. The key thing with this technology is box ticking to say you have a policy in place and to avoid liability, not to solve the problem effectively. This is only done through picking ethical, rigorous and professional staff. But that doesn’t scale because they are the 1% which is the real problem. So back to liability box ticking.

mgiampapa 5y ago

From and enterprise perspective Citrix is very inexpensive compared to most other VDI platforms. It's not that hard to maintain and keep a farm running well if you limit your application deployment to me office and run your weird stuff on small app specific farms.

imagine99 5y ago
Can I ask what other platforms you have in mind that have feature parity with Citrix (more or less) but have even less attractive price points or are more convoluted to set up? I mean there are only like three or four major players in this field that I can think of and at least two of them are definitely easier and cheaper than Citrix (for VMware it is also true if you already have a vSphere infrastructure anyway)...
- mgiampapa 5y ago
  VMware is stupidly complex when it comes to management and deployment infra. I found Citrix far simplier and about 10x less expensive (particularly because it has much higher user density than a whole VM), but I'm also a few years distant from the VDI space.

aitchnyu 5y ago

My wish would be crisper text. The compression doesnt look optimised for text. And the latency between US and India is too high, IT should be able to launch machines close to users in a single click. Github codespaces should have more than 4 zones.

imagine99 5y ago

Looks potentially interesting and I might check it out. At first glance, a few caveats and potential deal breakers occurred to me from a non-technical perspective: - the 14-day trial (PoC'ing something like this in anything less than 8 weeks is just not something that happens in my experience, especially if upper management is involved and you still need to build the infrastructure around it) - lack of lab licenses for free or cheap (I'd want to put that through its paces myself for a significant amount of time and dogfood it before recommending this to clients or moving over a large org) - seeing 20 or 50 licenses min. purchase requirement is particularly disappointing when positioning yourself as a Citrix alternative. There is a ton of small outfits in niche industries out there with a requirement of 5 to 15 seats who might jump at this if it performs well. - lack of attractive education and non-profit pricing which, again, might be a particularly thankful and interested target audience. VDI is awesome, flexible and efficient if it performs well and is done right. Unfortunately in practice too often neither is the case. However the concept's potential still has a future if it sees further improvement and innovation. Cloud gaming, among others, shows that algorithms and tech stacks exist that can make this happen.