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That the answer isn't "well you just tunnel X11 and bring up your regular work flow." is interesting to me. Because for literally decades this was a completely

That the answer isn't "well you just tunnel X11 and bring up your regular work flow." is interesting to me. Because for literally decades this was a completely solved problem. That it is a question always makes me wonder what was in it for the purveyor's of OS software to make this so impossible to do.

rank0 5y ago
MacOS appears to make this intentionally difficult. I've tried with stuff like xQuartz but its finicky and Apple is extremely hostile to non-apple interoperability.
Steltek 5y ago
Achieving tunneled X applications is not hard, as you said it's a solved problem, but I have never found it worth the effort either. 1. VNC has a "stable session" that doesn't collapse when SSH closes. Even between Linux machines, I chose VNC when needing a permanent remote GUI. 2. Remote machines don't always have your preferred applications or the associated preferred configuration. Copying a light .vimrc was always easier than trying to export-import a heavier app. 3. Performance always sucked. Even between machines sitting next to each other. 4. I didn't edit files with a GUI app anyway. Didn't everyone just use Vim, Emacs, or Nano? Was remote GUI apps ever anyone's preferred method (X11 or not)?
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  4.) I typically just spawn a few xterms (edit, build/debug (typically using screen), and i/o). 3.) No, performance has been fine using X11 apps that were built with X11 in mind (vs Wayland or some sort of locally accelerated GPU helper(do you really need 25% transparent dialog boxes?)) 2.) There is remote machine I own/control (it has all the things I need) and going into a system that someone else has asked me to develop on (then ANSI terminal tools over SSL are always working) 1.) VNC has always been hit or miss for me, I do typically use screen(1) to keep sessions alive if for some reason the network dies in the middle. But all fine points.
qbasic_forever 5y ago
These days services are typically small containers with just enough binaries and dependencies to run the code, so bringing up a full X11 server session and tunneling it locally isn't really feasible or smart.

rank0 5y ago

MacOS appears to make this intentionally difficult. I've tried with stuff like xQuartz but its finicky and Apple is extremely hostile to non-apple interoperability.

Steltek 5y ago

Achieving tunneled X applications is not hard, as you said it's a solved problem, but I have never found it worth the effort either. 1. VNC has a "stable session" that doesn't collapse when SSH closes. Even between Linux machines, I chose VNC when needing a permanent remote GUI. 2. Remote machines don't always have your preferred applications or the associated preferred configuration. Copying a light .vimrc was always easier than trying to export-import a heavier app. 3. Performance always sucked. Even between machines sitting next to each other. 4. I didn't edit files with a GUI app anyway. Didn't everyone just use Vim, Emacs, or Nano? Was remote GUI apps ever anyone's preferred method (X11 or not)?

ChuckMcM 5y ago
4.) I typically just spawn a few xterms (edit, build/debug (typically using screen), and i/o). 3.) No, performance has been fine using X11 apps that were built with X11 in mind (vs Wayland or some sort of locally accelerated GPU helper(do you really need 25% transparent dialog boxes?)) 2.) There is remote machine I own/control (it has all the things I need) and going into a system that someone else has asked me to develop on (then ANSI terminal tools over SSL are always working) 1.) VNC has always been hit or miss for me, I do typically use screen(1) to keep sessions alive if for some reason the network dies in the middle. But all fine points.

qbasic_forever 5y ago

These days services are typically small containers with just enough binaries and dependencies to run the code, so bringing up a full X11 server session and tunneling it locally isn't really feasible or smart.