> Is compression really bad? In instances like file system, sometimes it may even be faster to enable compression as disk IO is slower than computational time.

> Is compression really bad? In instances like file system, sometimes it may even be faster to enable compression as disk IO is slower than computational time. Compression noticeably adds latency. You see that easily when scrolling windows; it's not difficult to detect at all. The intent is to get minimum latency; I use these remote DEs all day and latency creates fatigue. If you're truly remote with limited bandwidth then compression will clearly have value. > and what kind of NIC can't handle enough bandwidth for VNC Today, integrated NICs are great, but not long ago some of these were poor and roundtrip latency was as high as 100 us or more. I could see the difference just holding the space bar and watching a terminal cursor move. If you really want a nice experience use a decent NIC; nothing crazy, just not low end integrated stuff that's barely more than a PHY and relies almost entirely on the CPU. Latency is the thing I've worked to reduce so my remote desktops feel as local as possible. Every incremental change I've made has been noticeable; 2.5Gb/s is slightly better than 1 Gb/s when playing video, for example; something I noticed recently after upgrading the NIC on one remote host.