13 ms·

Actually embedding an X server in the article is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

by lucian1900 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago
That's a seriously awesome piece of work. I'm sure it could be used for more things than demos. X11's client-server model is seriously underappreciated, and the continuing efforts to make X behave exactly like Microsoft Windows frequently forget about network transparency. Conversely, trying to make X behave like Microsoft Remote Desktop is often unreasonably painful. I've not yet seen a nice solution for detaching and reattaching X applications like screen(1)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- XorNot 12y ago
  This is an ongoing complaint I have with X: remote desktop on Windows systems is still far superior to Linux systems.
  - scarygliders 12y ago
    Not if you use X11rdp. I should really do a Show HN of my X11rdp-o-Matic script, which automatically builds and installs X11rdp/xrdp from the github repo - it's been in existence for 2 years and I update the script(s) with enhancements from time to time. xrdp and the X11rdp back-end X server is in constant and full development, with an actual Xorg module being worked on as well. Edit: Indeed, I just submitted a Show HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021592
- Jasper_ 12y ago
  I wrote the server from scratch JavaScript, and I can't verify its accuracy towards real server behavior: https://github.com/magcius/xplain/blob/gh-pages/src/server/server.js https://github.com/magcius/xplain/blob/gh-pages/src/server/s... It's fake in a lot of ways, especially in its input model. It's well-commented and designed as a codebase to learn from, not as a real implementation of an X server that's reusable.
  - eridius 12y ago
    Very cool. Unfortunately, while it appears to run just fine under Safari, the window inspector is broken. It's not vertically splitting the area and putting the attributes on the right; it's horizontally splitting and putting the attributes below the window list, except there's no room to see any of the attributes like that. It seems a real shame for the layout of the window inspector to be the only compatibility issue with Safari. Any chance you can get that fixed?
    - Jasper_ 12y ago
      I don't know why, considering that it works fine under Firefox and Chrome. I don't have a Mac to test on here. Pull requests are welcome.
      - eridius 12y ago
        Actually, it turns out it's not even working right under Chrome either. The inspector isn't tall enough to show Properties, and it's not scrollable, so all I see is the "Properties" header with nothing under it. Here's what I'm seeing: https://files.app.net/299dvuDv6.png https://files.app.net/299dvuDv6.png Is this supposed to scroll, or what? Edit: The issue with Safari is purely that the flexbox model requires the -webkit prefix, so it needs `display: -webkit-flex` and `-webkit-flex: 1`. Edit 2: I'll submit a pull request for the Safari issues shortly, I'm trying to see if I can figure out what's wrong with scrolling first. Edit 3: PR submitted. This fixes both Safari compatibility and scrolling for Chrome/Safari.
        nandhp 12y ago
        It looks like it is supposed to scroll -- but it doesn't in Firefox 26 or Firefox 30.
- lucian1900 12y ago
  I don't think X11's network transparency is useful at all nowadays. RDP and VNC give much better results. Wayland's model is much more likely to end up with useful network support. Modern graphics simply does not scale across networks naively.
  - npsimons 12y ago
    I don't think X11's network transparency is useful at all nowadays. RDP and VNC give much better results. And yet every single time someone brings this up, plenty of people chime it that it is useful, because they're using it. Unless RDP and VNC have fixed their performance problems and don't break UI flow by putting the whole remote desktop in a separate window (instead of making windows for remote apps seamless), then many would contend that RDP and VNC don't give better results. And yet Wayland keeps steamrolling over these objections. Oh well, at least they finally admitted that network support isn't just some useless toy that can be added on later, "if anybody even uses it".
    - XorNot 12y ago
      Wayland knows the framebuffer of every application running in it. There's no reason the compositor can't export windows on a window by window basis.
      - aidenn0 12y ago
        This is actually how Xpra (mentioned earlier) works. It creates a dummy x server and installs itself as a compositing window manager.
    - lucian1900 12y ago
      > Unless RDP and VNC have fixed their performance problems They are both much, much faster than X11. X11 has higher latency and uses significantly more bandwidth. > by putting the whole remote desktop in a separate window (instead of making windows for remote apps seamless) Many of the things that make modern desktops nice (like client-side decorations) make it hard to merge remote and local windows. It's not impossible (witness VirtualBox's attempt), but there are peculiar corner cases if you want to make it generic across platforms. If you want a modern desktop that's fast on modern hardware (arguably its primary purpose), remote desktop will have to work RDP/VNC style.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  Have you tried Xpra? It bills itself as "screen for X" https://www.xpra.org/ https://www.xpra.org/
  - philsnow 12y ago
    I love xpra and used to use it every day (using a Mac laptop now and haven't figured out how to make xpra not suck on it w.r.t. modifier keys and dock / cmd-tab support). A big problem with xpra in myind is that the wire protocol doesn't even try to be version independent. If you're using slightly different versions on client and server, it just falls down. If you're using distro packages this is fine e as long as all clients and servers are similar enough to have overlap in the versions that they package. Otherwise you're building from source on every client and server, on various platforms.

Actually embedding an X server in the article is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

pjc50 12y ago

That's a seriously awesome piece of work. I'm sure it could be used for more things than demos. X11's client-server model is seriously underappreciated, and the continuing efforts to make X behave exactly like Microsoft Windows frequently forget about network transparency. Conversely, trying to make X behave like Microsoft Remote Desktop is often unreasonably painful. I've not yet seen a nice solution for detaching and reattaching X applications like screen(1)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
XorNot 12y ago
This is an ongoing complaint I have with X: remote desktop on Windows systems is still far superior to Linux systems.
- scarygliders 12y ago
  Not if you use X11rdp. I should really do a Show HN of my X11rdp-o-Matic script, which automatically builds and installs X11rdp/xrdp from the github repo - it's been in existence for 2 years and I update the script(s) with enhancements from time to time. xrdp and the X11rdp back-end X server is in constant and full development, with an actual Xorg module being worked on as well. Edit: Indeed, I just submitted a Show HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021592
Jasper_ 12y ago
I wrote the server from scratch JavaScript, and I can't verify its accuracy towards real server behavior: https://github.com/magcius/xplain/blob/gh-pages/src/server/server.js https://github.com/magcius/xplain/blob/gh-pages/src/server/s... It's fake in a lot of ways, especially in its input model. It's well-commented and designed as a codebase to learn from, not as a real implementation of an X server that's reusable.
- eridius 12y ago
  Very cool. Unfortunately, while it appears to run just fine under Safari, the window inspector is broken. It's not vertically splitting the area and putting the attributes on the right; it's horizontally splitting and putting the attributes below the window list, except there's no room to see any of the attributes like that. It seems a real shame for the layout of the window inspector to be the only compatibility issue with Safari. Any chance you can get that fixed?
  - Jasper_ 12y ago
    I don't know why, considering that it works fine under Firefox and Chrome. I don't have a Mac to test on here. Pull requests are welcome.
    - eridius 12y ago
      Actually, it turns out it's not even working right under Chrome either. The inspector isn't tall enough to show Properties, and it's not scrollable, so all I see is the "Properties" header with nothing under it. Here's what I'm seeing: https://files.app.net/299dvuDv6.png https://files.app.net/299dvuDv6.png Is this supposed to scroll, or what? Edit: The issue with Safari is purely that the flexbox model requires the -webkit prefix, so it needs `display: -webkit-flex` and `-webkit-flex: 1`. Edit 2: I'll submit a pull request for the Safari issues shortly, I'm trying to see if I can figure out what's wrong with scrolling first. Edit 3: PR submitted. This fixes both Safari compatibility and scrolling for Chrome/Safari.
      - nandhp 12y ago
        It looks like it is supposed to scroll -- but it doesn't in Firefox 26 or Firefox 30.
lucian1900 12y ago
I don't think X11's network transparency is useful at all nowadays. RDP and VNC give much better results. Wayland's model is much more likely to end up with useful network support. Modern graphics simply does not scale across networks naively.
- npsimons 12y ago
  I don't think X11's network transparency is useful at all nowadays. RDP and VNC give much better results. And yet every single time someone brings this up, plenty of people chime it that it is useful, because they're using it. Unless RDP and VNC have fixed their performance problems and don't break UI flow by putting the whole remote desktop in a separate window (instead of making windows for remote apps seamless), then many would contend that RDP and VNC don't give better results. And yet Wayland keeps steamrolling over these objections. Oh well, at least they finally admitted that network support isn't just some useless toy that can be added on later, "if anybody even uses it".
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Wayland knows the framebuffer of every application running in it. There's no reason the compositor can't export windows on a window by window basis.
    - aidenn0 12y ago
      This is actually how Xpra (mentioned earlier) works. It creates a dummy x server and installs itself as a compositing window manager.
  - lucian1900 12y ago
    > Unless RDP and VNC have fixed their performance problems They are both much, much faster than X11. X11 has higher latency and uses significantly more bandwidth. > by putting the whole remote desktop in a separate window (instead of making windows for remote apps seamless) Many of the things that make modern desktops nice (like client-side decorations) make it hard to merge remote and local windows. It's not impossible (witness VirtualBox's attempt), but there are peculiar corner cases if you want to make it generic across platforms. If you want a modern desktop that's fast on modern hardware (arguably its primary purpose), remote desktop will have to work RDP/VNC style.
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Have you tried Xpra? It bills itself as "screen for X" https://www.xpra.org/ https://www.xpra.org/
- philsnow 12y ago
  I love xpra and used to use it every day (using a Mac laptop now and haven't figured out how to make xpra not suck on it w.r.t. modifier keys and dock / cmd-tab support). A big problem with xpra in myind is that the wire protocol doesn't even try to be version independent. If you're using slightly different versions on client and server, it just falls down. If you're using distro packages this is fine e as long as all clients and servers are similar enough to have overlap in the versions that they package. Otherwise you're building from source on every client and server, on various platforms.