Low-Bandwidth X 145
pinzari self-promotes with this: "What about running a full-featured X desktop on
your Yopy? Or having a virtual Linux machine, running at your ISP site, being accessed by a TV or PS2? I know Slashdot has treated this more then once and I remember a really interesting thread a few months ago. I think that most of the reasons why nobody has taken this seriously is because nobody thought it was actually possible. Medialogic has just released MS1 of mlview-dxpc. It's
a deep rework of the old DXPC which can really be used to run remote X desktops over the Internet, the way Citrix, Microsoft and SCO aim to do using proprietary protocols like RDP and ICA. mlview-dxpc is very preliminary but, in our opinion, it looks very promising. After all this hype about .NET and Application Service Providers, I can't forget X was born exactly for this purpose."
Re:How useful (Score:1)
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Re:bandwidth (Score:1)
i think the biggest problem with running a remote X desktop to your handheld or cell phone or whatever else would be bandwidth.. it just isn't there for little portable devices.
Not Quite. The article mentions the client uses on the order of 10 MB of memory to cache things. Not too many cell phones have the kind of storage available.
Terminal Server (Score:1)
Re:I need this! (Score:1)
Having 1mbit (or 5.5, or 11, whatever you're using) of bandwidth per client isn't going to be the biggest factor in the performance of the device, the latency is going to be a very big issue.
Re:trying to compile this thing.. (Score:1)
The linker keeps a cache of the libraries it has, you need to rebuild the cache when you add libraries.
Re:Terminal Server (Score:1)
2. X is standard (!!)
3. X sucks, indeed, but it's much easier to
improve it that to impose another standard
Re:VNC (Score:1)
BTW I think that Win4Lin [win4lin.com] is making a remote Windows app server which might be based on VNC.
VNC is like magic, man. That's where it's at. :)
===
Re:VNC (Score:1)
I doubt that's down to terminal services - running it on reasonably fast machines over 128k is quite usable - I've done it more than once from home when the windows guys at work aren't answering the phone. Over 100 mbit net, it's *very* fast.
Re:bandwidth? Nope, Screen Size... (Score:1)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
must be that randomness M$ puts in to all it's products that decides how well (if?
Re:another thing to consider.... (Score:2)
Well.. you may be right.. Nah. Please realize that Open Source does not explicitly mean that the developers are idiots. It doesn't even mean that they do it on their spare time! *gasp*
There are actually people getting paid for developing open source code! *shock*
Re:Terminal Server (Score:2)
Its just that most people dont bother, since over a low bandwidth link you're never going to get good enough performance for ordinary desktop use (the added latency for clicks and graphics that cant be compressed kill the idea with or without efficient protocols). And with unix you can always use the command line, which eliminates the actual need for it in most everyday situations.
Remotable displays are great on LANs, but they can only be made less painful over low bandwidth connections.
(Oh, btw, X uses server side (desktop) drawing and bitmaps mostly even without compression.)
Re:How useful (Score:3)
Why remote? (Score:1)
With all this
Now, I've run X applications (and even entire desktops) remotely, and it's fun to try and can be very useful in some cases, but the lag was noticable, so I strongly prefer to run things local.
----
Re:VNC (Score:1)
It could have been possible if everything had been written using some "light" toolkit and X protocol greatly modified but unfortunately it isn't.
The goal of ML-View is to make it all possible using standard X server, standard qt/gtk toolkit!
And the problem of using it under Windoze, MacOS or anything? You use dxpc now, you will use mlview-dxpc soon. Leave us some time.
Maciek, YAMD (= yet another mlview developer)
Sun's done this already. (Score:1)
OT: WTS (was RE: VNC) (Score:1)
--
Re:bandwidth (Score:1)
bandwidth (Score:1)
VNC with TIGHT ENCODING is what you need. (Score:1)
What else do I use VNC for? I start a session on my dual PII linux box in the basement and use it to run eroaster/xcdroast and limewire (great gnutella client). Long running apps that you would like to connect to and leave burning/downloading for days are a perfect reason to start a vnc Xserver (Xvnc).
Remember folks, the unix vncserver is not a screen scraping type app like the windows one, it's basically just a standard X server WITHOUT any hardware support. There *IS* a way to get the screen scaping type functionality under unix though, using x0rfbserver.
http://www.hexonet.de/software/x0rfbserver/
http://www.google.com/search?q=vnc+tight+encodi
http://www.google.com/search?q=limewire
-kcurrie, too lazy to login..
Re:VNC (Score:1)
There were murmors on the VNC list (before the S/N ratio dropped like a rock) of someone who actually write a Java wrapper for AWT (and Swing, I think) that lets all Java apps easily act like RFB servers with a few code changes. I never tried it, though.
Re:Grunge dropping New Jack through a press table (Score:2)
VNC (Score:3)
Re:trying to compile this thing.. (Score:2)
Thanks
Re:X protocol chattiness is the problem not bandwi (Score:2)
The biggest problem is the Terminal Server side of things, it requires heaps of RAM cause multi-user is obviously just a gross hack - each user is just assigned a big block of memory, and if they all run excel, each users address space has to have the text loaded in. We have an NT box with half a GB of RAM just so that about 20 people can run word/excel/proprietary windows app.
no sharing of text between different users. ugg..
the citrix display exporting side of things works quite well (though it can very occassionally hang the display). but then, X works
I notice you didn't bother to even try justify your claim of "[X] is an old tired technology". what specifically needs improving? Anti-aliasing extension has been written and implemented for XF4, this very article is about a new X compressor. So what do you mean with "never improved"?
from the non-technical POV, citrix+MS TS is an absolute nightmare in terms of licensing. you pay for MS the local NT workstation client, for TS and per-user licence for TS. Plus citrix per user on top of that...
uggg..
--paulj
PS: nice troll, but not good enough.
Re:bandwidth (Score:1)
Furthermore, if you would make a 'clean' GUI just for the sake of transporting it to remote boxes, you'd miss all the new multimedia features required nowdays. How funny would that GUI be without a proper browser (banners, images etc...), mediastreamers etc ?
Why do you read Slashdot ? (Score:1)
every place is my home :-) (Score:1)
(Begin rant. Even the small dumb PDA-type thingees need to be "multi-user". Multi-role might be more descriptive. "My Computer" seems somehow incredibly stupid. End rant.)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
I need this! (Score:1)
I want to propose a monster box to run the apps, and many smaller boxes managing the displays of the 30 or so portable units per group. With each unit getting up to 1Mbit/s of bandwidth, then low-bandwidth X on an otherwise embeedded-class handheld sounds like it will be an excellent solution to my problem.
Steve
--
Still no support for resumable desktops (Score:4)
Resumable X sessions would absolutely rock. There is always a lot of setting up to do when one starts an X session - I don't care how much effort you put into .xinitrc or how intelligent your desktop environment's session management is - there's always lengthy initialisation for my X sessions. Resumable X sessions, combined with a low bandwidth X proxy, would allow me to:
At the moment I can (and do) use VNC for (1) because I have a fast home LAN. But even tight VNC is too much of a bandwidth hog for (2) or (3).
Hell, if resumable X displays existed I would probably rent a colocated box on the net's backbone, then just use thin clients (read: sleek X servers) to access my desktop from wherever I happened to be in the world.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the architecture of the X 'proxy' that needs to be invented? It would have to be a full-fledged X server, and would have to maintain state for any clients which were displayed on it. It would also have to be an X client, capable of displaying itself on a remote computer, but capable of "detaching" from the display and "re-attaching" to another one (that's why it needs to maintain all the state of any clients which are displaying on it.. )
Colour depths would be a nightmare, as they always are with X.
Perhaps extending VNC so that "X protocol" is one of the encoding options for communication between VNC server and VNC viewer would be a place to start (though I'm completely ignorant of how easy it would be to graft stuff like this on to VNC).
I'd be interested to hear what others have to think on the matter.
Re:Why remote? (Score:1)
Bandwidth not the only problem (Score:1)
I don't imagine that this would be *that* a feature to add to X, with a caveats - like the screen size, bitrate etc not changing. Since low bandwidth links also tend to be less reliable (going out of range with mobile phones etc) this would be really useful and is a good reason why people often use VNC between linux systems even though they could be using X.
Re:Bandwidth not the only problem (Score:1)
Re:Terminal Server (Score:1)
It "tries" in windows, but, unfortunately, since windows is a black-box, it is not very successful.
See http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/faq.html#q36 and #39
Nice troll though.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
Re:Why remote? (Score:1)
Re:Why remote? (Score:1)
Browsing on a 56K connection? (Score:2)
I think a 56 Kilobit connection could easily handle 4 Kilobits.
Not when a site is slashdotted within five minutes [slashdot.org] and it isn't even sending at 4 kilobits.
(That didn't turn out too well... let's try that again.)
__________________________________________________
I think a 56 Kilobit connection could easily handle 4 Kilobits.
Wow! It'd let me surf an order of magnitude faster. From the article:
If "Internet" is taken to include "World Wide Web," then Slashdot loading 1000% faster is a Good Thing.All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
Sun's SUN Rays (Score:1)
linuxvalley.com in itallian?!? Morons.. (Score:1)
-H
TCP/IP (Score:2)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
Frankly, WTS leaves VNC chokin' on the dust
Has anyone had any luck with the new JPEG compression?
BRx.
Re:Sun's SUN Rays (Score:1)
___
Re:Still no support for resumable desktops (Score:2)
2. Access my home's desktop from the computer laboratory in town
x0rfbserver [hexonet.de]. A Unix/Linux VNC server that acts like a Windows one, where the remote user takes over the desktop.
Im late to the party (Score:1)
Re:VNC: Try tight encoding (Score:1)
Bye egghat
Re:Why remote? (Score:1)
----
Re:How useful (Score:1)
The only thing I can think of that might cause problems when moving between your local machine and the school's machine are the paths set-up to access data.. To verify the rest, just take a look at the toolboxes included in the two copies.. (I'm not sure what the cmd is, but I'm sure there is one..)
Re:VNC (Score:3)
Try running XEmacs over a 28.8Kb/s modem link. You'll see the 'send' light flash, then the 'receive' light, then 'send' again, and so on for several minutes. This indicates to me that a lengthy dialogue is happening between the X server on my machine and XEmacs running remotely; and that each side can only say one thing, then wait for an answer.
Most likely XEmacs is asking about all the fonts available and their sizes, or something like that. Maybe it is querying X properties one by one. But anyway, it would be a lot quicker if the X server could just send a single, highly compressed lump of information containing almost everything XEmacs (or any other X client) needs to know. Alternatively, make the communication more asynchronous so that X clients can send several requests at once, without waiting for an answer between each one. Going backwards and forwards across a modem link usually takes about a quarter of a second (for me) - do you want that sort of delay for each of a hundred messages?
VNC (even with compression) is a bandwidth hog compared to X, but it's not so much of a 'latency hog'. Running XEmacs over VNC, it starts much quicker, because the X server (Xvnc) and X client (XEmacs) are on the same machine. The communication that goes over the high-latency modem link does not consist of lots of small requests, (it's just raw pixel data) so the application's response time is a lot better. (At least when starting; if you wait several minutes for XEmacs to start with X-over-modem, it's just about usable once it's running.)
The irony is that compression, which is supposed to make the link effectively faster, actually increases the latency for sending short messages. Of course special compression designed for the X protocol will be designed to minimize the effect on latency.
Are there Free X-Servers for Windows. (Score:1)
Re:Still no support for resumable desktops (Score:4)
It already exists, and has existed for a number of years now... (since 1995)
It is called "xmove", and is available from ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/pub/xmove/ [columbia.edu]
If you're running Debian, then it's only an apt-get away.
If running Red Hat or any other RPM-based distribution, there is an i386 and src RPM available on the 'Net [msu.edu] as well.
In addition, I suggest that you try out x2x. Think "Xinerama" across multiple desktops over the network. It's kind of like that. With the combination of x2x and xmove, you can actually move the displays of X applications across machines, and control all of the boxes from one control point. Good stuff. (:
Re:Are there Free X-Servers for Windows. (Score:1)
Check out WeirdX [jcraft.com]. It's hosted on SourceForge [sourceforge.net] and also has a project page on Freshmeat [freshmeat.net].
WeirdX is a GPL'd Java-based X server and even has ESD support. It should run great any operating system which has decent Java support (including Windows and MacOS).
Hopefully this is what you're looking for. If you're willing to try an X server for DOS, then I suppose Java is even more than adaquate. (:
What does .NET have to do with this?! (Score:2)
Re:queing is implemented in X but... (Score:2)
The problem is the bad aspects of XLib, where huge amounts of work cannot be done without doing synchronouse reqests for information.
I think the X protocol was designed for asynchronous message flow, aspects of how damage events and window mapping are handled show that they planned this. All the synchronous messages are from the bad stuff that was added in X11, when they started quickly bloating it to provide the features (like color) people were insisting on, and were unable to do things correctly.
I see no way to get true low bandwidth unless the Xlib protocol (and thus all programs that use Xlib) is scrapped and replaced.
Re:VNC (Score:2)
That would be true if you used a protocol-independant compressor such as ssh. However, the X-compressors (mlview-dxpc, lbx and to a lesser extent, classical dxpc) all know about this issue, and compress "intelligently": they try to cache session states, and satisfy some requests locally from the proxy, thus cutting out round trips. The problem so far has been that dxpc was not very efficient at this, but according to their blurb, mlview-dxpc is much more sophisticated in this regard.
Re:Terminal Server (Score:2)
The main problem is that toolkit widgets quickly bloat up to have a huge amount of data that describes them. I think it is very likely that the amount of data will exceed the few rectangles sent to draw the widget. This is true of the ICCCM protocols for window managers: I have written a toolkit and a window manager, and I believe the code I need in the toolkit is about 3 times larger than the code I would need if I could just draw the window borders and handle drag + resize myself. Meanwhile I estimate the window manager is 85% communication code and only a tiny portion of actual drawing and event handling.
The other, and far more serious, problem, is that you will lock the interface into current toolkit design ideas. If X had been designed like this we would be forced to use the very early Athena widgets, and they would never have been changed due to the above-mentioned interface complexity. Because X was not designed like this, despite it's problems, it is able to emulate interfaces developed 15 years later with no problem!
Re:xmove and visuals (Score:2)
We cannot have information about how the display renders in user-visible structures that are required as arguments to graphics calls. It prevents exactly the type of behavior wanted.
This means any concept of "graphics context" must be provided by static state and not by arguments to the calls. These internal structures can have device-specific information in them because they are hidden and no user code depends on their contents not changing (though I would prefer to push it all to the server).
Re:NeWS and DPS (Score:2)
One reason is the widgets resided on the server. However I have said a few times here, and still feel, that this is a very very bad idea and should be avoided at all costs.
Ignoring that, NeWS was still faster and used less bandwidth, and here is why I think it did:
The stream was a simple encoding, not a library, and not structured. Basically it was PostScript, but all the bytes with the high bit set were equivalents of common PostScript tokens, small numbers like 0 and 1, and they introduced packed arrays of float, int, or char.
The commands to create and map windows, to pick windows to draw into, and all the graphics, were entirely asynchronous. In fact synchronous communication was completely left out of NeWS design. Therefore no blocking or sync indicators had to be put into the stream.
The graphics were quite high-level. In particular compared to X it was easy to select a font and draw in it at any size and transformation. You could also draw an image with arbitrary transformation, so a small image could be blown up and this could take much less bandwidth.
You could download small graphics primitives as PostScript procedures, to make the graphics even "higher level"
DPS is not a good solution because it does not replace the window mapping and color management code of X. This is a significant part of the bandwidth.
Re:Why remote? (Score:3)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
There are people who call fast things "slow" only because they're less fast than something else. And who will say that downloading a 600MB file over a modem is "impossible" just because it takes more time. I'm not saying that you're one of them, and I'll keep an open mind and read all the opinions and research, but I don't personally see a problem.
===
Re:linuxvalley.com in itallian?!? Morons.. (Score:1)
The US has a
Re:another cool use....... (Score:2)
This is not a TV
It's a monitor with Television hardware.
There's a huge difference!
Re:VNC (Score:1)
NeWS and DPS (Score:1)
My understanding is that Display Postscript also is more bandwidth efficient than plain X. There is a DPS module for XFree, and Solaris and Irix both come with DPS modules. I'll have to test that to find out if it's really true.
TightVNC (Score:5)
Re:You couldn't (Score:1)
Enigma
Re:Why remote? (Score:1)
Exactly why, it can be useful. The logic here is that if it can serve a useful purpose then it should be explored and improved so that it can be even more useful.
Sometime local isn't an option. Perhaps the program takes up too much space, or perhaps it's a unique situation that requires the program be on a specific computer. The fact that cases like that exist and that more useful cases can be imagined make a good case for expanding and improving the technology.
But at the most basic the best reason to develop remote GUI is the fact that people can tell the difference between local and remote (ie it's slower). Once you can't tell the difference anymore then I'm sure you'll be using it.
Re:Are there Free X-Servers for Windows. (Score:1)
Re:Are there Free X-Servers for Windows. (Score:1)
Re:X protocol chattiness is the problem not bandwi (Score:1)
The problem with X over non-LAN links is indeed latency - not bandwidth. X is not a fat protocol, it's very thin actually[1], but it is extremely chatty. You could have the fattest pipe on the planet to your X client but it would still suck if the latency was bad. (eg high-throughput, high-latency satelite links).
Small applications tend to be fine. eg xterm is fine over a 33.6k modem, but the bigger the application gets, the more windows and child windows it has, the more chatting the Xserver and client have to do. Plus some apps just have to do needless fancy stuff (eg as someone posted, the gimp has an animated border for selects) which kill performance on high-latency links.
X: it doesn't suck, despite what the kiddies on slashdot might say.
[1]. data that it transfers, eg icons, is larger than it needs to be as they are raw {pixmaps,bitmaps} but server caches these.
queing is implemented in X but... (Score:3)
The low level implementation of X programs requires a linear flow of
, and so on...
Because there is no way for client nor server to understand which information/property depends on any preceding, the protocol messages have to be processed one after the other.
In cases like requests to set/request a large set of similar properties (e.g. color information), queuing takes place and messages are sent containing a whole batch of single events, but this doesn't happen often in real world applications, thus not noticably increasing performance.
The X protocol was not designed for an asynchronous message flow.
Re:VNC (Score:1)
I already have all my desktop setup running on the computer I'm using so why do I need another? X intergrates the application into the existing environment and almost makes it transparent to the fact that it isn't running on your computer.
The only advantage that I see to using the VNC, Terminal Services, etc. way is that if you have a device that is made just for that say a VNC device that doesn't have any sort of desktop and it just uses the remote one. But if you already are using a full fledge desktop on your computer, running another on a remote computer seems redundant.
One problem I see with the X protocol though is that clients behind a firewall can't run X apps on a remote server (without setup on the firewall anyway). I have never used X tunneling via ssh so maybe it solves this problem?
Re:VNC (Score:1)
Re:TightVNC (Score:1)
Re:VNC (Score:1)
we use w2k advanced + metaframe at work quite freqently.
even over a ds-1 over 1200 miles long, its totally completely useable.
better than having windows on my desktop, really
Peter
Bandwidth already an issue (Score:2)
This approach does help with admin costs, and is handy for places where maintaining a "real" workstation is out of the question, like a factory floor. But I'd hate to run any serious apps on such a system. Except for limited demo apps, your server and network never provide real responsiveness, and the immediate feedback that makes a GUI app work goes out the window (no pun intended).
But suppose you can de-bloat your GUI? Impossible if you're running Windows or CDE, but Linux-style desktops are more flexible. (I say "Linux style" because they run fine under any Posix OS.) Consider, for example, the plugable widget themes in KDE. So far themes have mostly been used to implement graphic overkill -- but they can just as easily go the other way.
As for GIMP: do you really want to do graphic editing on a 3-inch screen?
__________________
Re:Terminal Server (Score:1)
Re:Why remote? (Score:2)
is it possible... (Score:2)
Is there a reason to do this?
Is there a market for this, or are there people who need this service (other than yourself)?
What are the moral implications?
Of course the last question does not apply to this, but the first two do. Mainly the second question. If you were to set this up would there be a market for this service and would it be a money maker. This is the real question. I think that there is company that lets you access a linux desktop from a web browser. This is not much different. You must of course pay for the service. Oh and by the way, much of the internet is going to be pay for services in the not so near future. It sucks, but all these companies need to make money someway.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Re:VNC (Score:2)
Except that there are plenty of things VNC can't do. e.g. the equivalent of an arbitary number of "xterm -display
Re:is it possible... (Score:2)
Question 2 is very comercially oriented. What would have happend if Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman or Eric Allman or the founders of Apache had asked that question? And if you look at those projects, they were often started solely because the author, him/herself desired it, and for no other reason.
Perhaps it would be better rephased as "will it be useful to people?" But it's a factor in a decision, not the whole of it.
Question 3 is always a valid question, but bear in mind that morality varies from country to country, from region to region, from person to person.
TightVNC vs X (Score:4)
I am developing TightVNC [tightvnc.com] software which features a number of efficient bandwidth optimizations for well-known VNC software suite, and I'd like to share my opinion and experience on low-bandwidth remote desktop solutions. I think TightVNC and future versions of TridiaVNC [tridiavnc.com] may be a better alternatives as compared to X in all its flavours (with LBX, DXPC etc.) and I'll try to explain why in the text below. In short, I don't feel much pain using TightVNC over 33.6 Kbps dial-up connection.
Speaking of X and TightVNC, each choice has its specific benefits and drawbacks. First, let's look at strong sides of TightVNC (many points are applicable to the standard VNC, except for the bandwidth usage):
From my real-life experience, TightVNC session is usually more bandwidth-friendly as compared to X with SSH compression, but X and VNC are very different in their architectures, and there are situations where X is more efficient. And it's not always simple to compare X and VNC.
The main problem of X is its complexity. X was intended to be too flexible and universal by design, but this also means that underlying techniques and protocols are extremely complicated. I often imagine X died under the pressing of it's own complexity. Now about weakness points of the TightVNC:
Maybe I've forgotten to say something above, but now it's too late and I have to go now.
--
With Best Wishes,
Constantin
Can X be the next big thing? (Score:2)
In Europe, where mobile telephony is a mass market, nobody cares what OS a telephone is running. The same is true in the US. We think that, soon, nobody will pay attention to the OS a computer does run. BTW, that OS will be Linux, your desktop applications will run unmodified on fbdev and X, and you'll pay a 32MB PDA with 32MB of ROM from which to boot, no HD but a 1Mbps Internet connection 24x7x365 something like 150$. This assumption let us believe server based computing is a real alternative to the PC based architecture which has ruled the world so far.
I read some posts talking about persistence of X connections and resource usage. They were very good points. Infact we are working hard on them. Persistence is not very difficult to achieve, as it's mainly a matter of proxies reconnecting after a network failure. In the future we'll think at 'freezing' X clients and server, the way APMS does. Furthermore we think that the VM technology experimented by VMWare (but also available in Linux as virtual-machines running in user space) are the right complement to make possible thousands of users on the same host. Resource usage at client (X server) side is not that bad already. mlview-dxpc tries to make possible to run full-featured X desktops, as the one you are used to at your -local- machine. I mean with thousands and thousands of bitmap images coming from the net. If you test mlview-dxpc you'll find that a huge amount of bandwidth (and memory) is used by animated GIFs. This is simple to overcome. It's enough an X extension to handle this at the widget-set level. Why nobody has done this before? Because to run a browser on a low bandwidth link was simply not possible, so why bother?
To rewrite an application from scratch is a tough task. This is why Java didn't work and .NET won't. It's much simpler
to adapt a stable code base to different conditions. If
you have given a look at QT Embedded, you know that most of
the KDE compiles smoothly under it. I expect to be possible
to configure KDE in the Control Center for slow links in the
future (it's enough to disable animations in Konqueror and
display a few other things in a different way). I expect
also to have at least three different behaviours for your
usual GTK and QT applications: X running locally, X running
remotely, local framebuffer with low resource usage and small screens. In this
future world we'll be able to run agenda or MP3 player on the
local PDA and write full featured DOCs and browse the net
on the remote machine.
I read a post about a free X not being available on Win32 or platform XYZ. An X server is a network server which translates X protocol in graphic calls that it redirects to the hardware. It's simple to separate the two parts and, actually, this is exactly what Xvnc, XGGI and Xfbdev do. There is already a port of XFree86 for Win32, together with GTK and GNOME desktop. I heard GGI people have compiled it on almost everything from the coffe machine to the Palm and TinyX is now part of XFree86.
One last word about mlview-dxpc's performances compared to other solutions... I think the best is to download and test it yourself.
Re:bandwidth (Score:2)
Agreed. However, I found this snippet on the website. Grammar aside, it sounds like they have licked a few problems. Although it is tough to stop feature creep and other oddities from bloating the software.
If they get this working, could be fun.another thing to consider.... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the desktop is not the only thing that needs to be lightweight. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to run the GIMP over a 28.8 connection.
Don't get me wrong though...
I'd be more than happy to have a lighter desktop available.
Besides, a lighter desktop would likely run better on local machines as well.
Re:What does .NET have to do with this?! (Score:2)
X protocol chattiness is the problem not bandwidth (Score:2)
We put some protocol analyzers on it to see what was going on. It turns out that X is extremely chatty. This particular application made over a 1000 round trips between the client and server during start up. When running on a LAN where latency is a milisecond or less this is not a problem, but when running across 15 hops with a latency of around 300ms the chattiness blows up in your face.
If the latency is low, X's bandwidth requirements are very modest. I used to run an X terminal on a 14.4Kbs modem to telecommute and while it was a bit slow it was usable.
To make X a WAN friendly protocol someone needs to address this chattiness issue.
David
RDP client for Terminal Server available under GPL (Score:2)
RDP is the thin client protocol used by Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000. Well, you guys might be interested to know that Samba team member Matt Chapman has done it.
rdesktop is available on the rdesktop website [rdesktop.org] and only supports NT4 and 8-bit screens. Since then, patches have been made by several people, which extend the support to Windows 2000 and 16-bit screens. Get the "unified patched" version from Peter Bystrom's site [bibl4.oru.se] instead.
This is of course great news if you previously were forced to use a Windows RDP client on the desktop to access your (corporate) Windows network. You could even make a very inexpensive thin Linux client with RDP, VNC and Low-bandwidth X support.
I don't know if Matt actually got the reward. The German company IGEL [www.igel.de] might as well have caved in and bought a licence from Microsoft, since they are now offering products containing RDP support.
Jacco (to e-mail me, please remove all yourclothes) /var/log
---
# cd
Free X server for Win32 from RedHat (Score:3)
http://sources.redhat.com/win32-x11/
and
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
These actually may be the same project. Says it runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. I expect it would run on Windows 2000 as well.
Grunge dropping New Jack through a press table (Score:3)
Re:VNC (Score:2)
I find VNC very quick on 10Mb lan, even some interactive games like xboing are very playable, and not even a quarter of the 10Mb bandwidth used. It was fairly usable even using my 28.8 modem at home. Much quicker than PCAnywhere. I did some tests though and found it wasn't very quick when the server was running on platforms other than Linux (e.g. Windows.) Connecting to a Windows session was much closer to PCAnywhere slowness. I do run icewm though, which is much lighter than gnome or kde. I've never used terminal services, so I can't really compare it - but in general, Windows was just not designed to stuff like this at all, and X is; so Windows is almost inherently going to be slower.
Re:VNC (Score:2)
But if you already are using a full fledge desktop on your computer, running another on a remote computer seems redundant
Not entirely. VNC lets you run multiple desktops from the same machine. In fact in my case, I have a linux box set up with no local display at all (no monitor) which is actually running VNC desktops for three users. They're not very heavily used, so they perform well. They're also running from a slow old Pentium with only 64 MB ram and a 10 Mb lan card, so all in all they run pretty well.
Re:VNC (Score:3)
I think the real issue is that X isn't well designed for low bandwidth use - try something like MS (ick, I know) terminal services, and it's quite useable over 128k isdn, or even over 56k if neccesary. It can be done - it just needs a more efficient use of bandwidth than X currently does.
DXPC, lbxproxy and SSH compression (Score:3)
lbxproxy [hp.com] works with X. Part of it actually comes with XFree86.
DXPC [vigor.nu] is an oldie but goodie. It requires you to use it on both server and client end though.
And good old SSH [openssh.com] compression is usually good enough. Turn on X forwarding, turn up the compressiona and usually you're good to go.
I haven't found VNC to be very good for bandwidth, but you might want to try a VNC compressor like this [pagecreator.com].
- Serge Wroclawski
Re:bandwidth (Score:2)
Note that mlview-dxpc is not yet for the casual user. You won't find any GUI (what do you expect from a MS1 ;-) and you'll need some knowledge about how X is handling its DISPLAY.
so this becomes another semi-advanced thing, depending on your expertise, etc.
Read the link (Score:3)
Geez, read the link before you post, people. This isn't a lightweight desktop, it's a module for compression X protocol traffic. That's the big problem with running remote X sessions - they eat bandwidth like nothing else.
Fortunately it's also quite compressible. By optimising compression for the protocol, they're claiming to average 60:1 compression, making it possible to run a full-on X session on a 64k link... yummy.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
LBX is useble at 128kbit/s (Score:3)
LBX though is somewhat usable at 64, and really usable at 128kbit/s. I don't see how VNC could be a match for LBX. Also VNC somehow looks very ugly (probably a fonts problem).
X in itself is well designed for low bandwidth use, since it doesn't send the screen (or parts thereof) as bitmaps, but only sends graphics primitives (draw line, draw rect etc). LBX adds compression of events, omision of non-essential events and also (if you want) stream compression (I don't use it since I run LBX over a compressed SSH stream).
Re:Terminal Server (Score:2)
No, its because his post is, technically, complete and utter BS. I haven't read a /. post so technically inaccurate in a long time. So either he is incredibly clueless, or he is a troll. Hard to tell though.
Re:VNC (Score:2)
Using VNC in an X to X configuration is extremely fast, even on a 10M lan.
I was quite surprised the first time I saw a fast moving screensaver on the remote bax being updated locally in near realtime.