[TUHS] X, Suntools, and the like

[Robert Swierczek]

Here is my 2 cents to add: I think both approaches have their pro's
and con's.  This is what I would like to see in an ideal remote GUI
environment (I'll use the X11 convention for display server and
application client):

Mostly stateless as in VNC, little or no round-tripping of messages.

Client application contains a very small library (not a whole GUI
rendering library as needed by remote desk-topping).  Lighter than
Xlib.  Maybe on the order of curses.  Suitable for embedded devices.

Client should be tolerant of server going down and reconnecting (as in
VNC) because of a crash or migration.

User should see their application rendered in the servers widget scheme.

Server can be implemented natively or in a browser.

Some form of remote OpenGL supported (as in JS/WebGL)


On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 7:04 PM, Josh Good <pepe at naleco.com> wrote:
> On 2017 Mar 15, 09:40, Kurt H Maier wrote:
>>
>> Your usage habits are not natural laws.  I'm a systems administrator
>> too, and I use X11 forwarding every single day, on dozens of different
>> programs.
>>
>> It's all very well for X11's networking tools to be useless for you.
>> That doesn't make them useless in general, and it doesn't mean the
>> functionality should be deleted.
>
> I don't use X11 forwarding because it works bad/slow over WAN links,
> but RDP/ICA works just fine over the same. Also, in X11 forwarding any
> network hiccup means the X11 app you are remoting just crashes, that
> does not happen in the RDP/ICA world.
>
> The real problem is that X11 predates the "GUI desktop metaphor". In X11
> forwarding you remote bitmaps (or vectors or primitives or whatever)
> which belong to an app, whereas in RDP you remote bitmaps (and only
> bitmaps, and never anything more than bitmaps) which belong to a "full,
> self-contained, GUI desktop".
>
> In my opinion, X11 is not appropriate for desktops --it is designed more
> for a scientific workstation kind of thing--, but currently there is
> just no mature alternative in the Unix/Linux world (except for Mac OS X,
> of course).
>
> --
> Josh Good
>