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NT's support for multiplexed interactive user sessions is piss-poor and has always come with a CAL restriction that was _absurd_. To this day there's no real "m

NT's support for multiplexed interactive user sessions is piss-poor and has always come with a CAL restriction that was _absurd_. To this day there's no real "multiuser on consoles". (Yes yes, Citrix, rdp, Powershell Remoting, OpenSSH: compare those with X and, I guess, also SSH, and they suck.)

tssva 3y ago
I'm not sure what the requirement for purchasing CALs has to do with whether an OS is multi-user or not. I have administered or been a user of interactive remote NT user session systems going back to beta testing the initial release of WinFrame in the mid 90's. Although worlds better today, I would not have called it pisspoor even then. Today RDS is much more capable than X on a unix system.
- tiahura 3y ago
  As someone else in that space in the mid 90s I would agree that it was pretty remarkable nearly 30 years ago, especially considering the competition.
- hulitu 3y ago
  As far as I know NT 4 was not able to have 2 users logged on at the same time. So it was not a multiuser system.
nullindividual 3y ago
RDP is great. It works fluidly over 56k modems. X “sucks” as it could never do that. This argument works both ways.
- hanszarkov 3y ago
  False, I've done remote XDMCP in the early 2000s and it worked well on dial up.
password4321 3y ago
A request for an official answer on CALs for Microsofts' SSH port is about to turn 6 years old: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926 https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  While MS licensing is shitty, there is nothing ambigous there, it's the same as everything else there, be it RDP, SMB or Apache. If you use the User CAL model then any user can have any amount of connections from any amount of devices used by the same user. If you have 100 employees using SSH (or Apache or whatever) - you need to license 100 User CALs.
Asooka 3y ago
Windows supports much richer remote access than anything built on X. I can log in using standard graphical login, my keyboard layouts carry over, audio is transparently handled, the screen size isn't tied to the existence of a remote monitor and 3d acceleration just works. And all that works out of the box with no setup necessary other than enabling it. On Linux, the only workflow I could get working was to use x11vnc to control an existing local session. To log in, I have to run x11vnc as root, pass it some magic cookie (I have no idea what that is still, but some magic incantation from SO did the trick), then once I log in, the running x11vnc dies, and I have to restart it as a regular user to control the session I just authenticated.
- hanszarkov 3y ago
  you've never seen remote X, it was a decade ahead of RDP
- icedchai 3y ago
  You can just "ssh -X" into your remote server, then run an app. SSH will configure X authentication for you (the "magic cookie stuff") and set up the "DISPLAY" environment variable to forward X11 connections over an encrypted tunnel. The app will display on your local desktop. It will even work on a Mac, if you install XQuartz.

tssva 3y ago

I'm not sure what the requirement for purchasing CALs has to do with whether an OS is multi-user or not. I have administered or been a user of interactive remote NT user session systems going back to beta testing the initial release of WinFrame in the mid 90's. Although worlds better today, I would not have called it pisspoor even then. Today RDS is much more capable than X on a unix system.

tiahura 3y ago
As someone else in that space in the mid 90s I would agree that it was pretty remarkable nearly 30 years ago, especially considering the competition.
hulitu 3y ago
As far as I know NT 4 was not able to have 2 users logged on at the same time. So it was not a multiuser system.

nullindividual 3y ago

RDP is great. It works fluidly over 56k modems. X “sucks” as it could never do that. This argument works both ways.

hanszarkov 3y ago
False, I've done remote XDMCP in the early 2000s and it worked well on dial up.

password4321 3y ago

A request for an official answer on CALs for Microsofts' SSH port is about to turn 6 years old: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926 https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926

justsomehnguy 3y ago
While MS licensing is shitty, there is nothing ambigous there, it's the same as everything else there, be it RDP, SMB or Apache. If you use the User CAL model then any user can have any amount of connections from any amount of devices used by the same user. If you have 100 employees using SSH (or Apache or whatever) - you need to license 100 User CALs.

Asooka 3y ago

Windows supports much richer remote access than anything built on X. I can log in using standard graphical login, my keyboard layouts carry over, audio is transparently handled, the screen size isn't tied to the existence of a remote monitor and 3d acceleration just works. And all that works out of the box with no setup necessary other than enabling it. On Linux, the only workflow I could get working was to use x11vnc to control an existing local session. To log in, I have to run x11vnc as root, pass it some magic cookie (I have no idea what that is still, but some magic incantation from SO did the trick), then once I log in, the running x11vnc dies, and I have to restart it as a regular user to control the session I just authenticated.

hanszarkov 3y ago
you've never seen remote X, it was a decade ahead of RDP
icedchai 3y ago
You can just "ssh -X" into your remote server, then run an app. SSH will configure X authentication for you (the "magic cookie stuff") and set up the "DISPLAY" environment variable to forward X11 connections over an encrypted tunnel. The app will display on your local desktop. It will even work on a Mac, if you install XQuartz.