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Remote desktop vs. remote displayRemote desktop vs. remote displayPosted Feb 15, 2013 1:59 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by madscientist Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland
Wow, some people like to argue. I'll reiterate what I said originally: (a) remote desktop is not what I want and not what a lot of people currently using X want, and (b) I've seen nothing to suggest that Wayland is not capable of supporting remote display.
Other than that a few notes:
On my Ubuntu system remote desktop is trivial: no need to install anything (it's part of the base system). I select the "Desktop Sharing" applet and enable it, then when I need to connect from a remote system I use the "Remote Desktop Client", enter the server name and my password, and it just works. I have no problem believing the Windows implementation of remote desktop is better than X's. However, X's remote display model is what I want, and in my experience, Windows doesn't have the same flexibility. However, even that is beside the point: maybe Windows is better and more feature-ful than X in every possible way. It makes absolutely no difference to me, since I don't use it. What I care about is what features Wayland has, compared to X.
Comparing the number of people who use remote desktop on Windows to those using remote display in X is useless. We're talking about Wayland and X. The only meaningful statistic is how many X users who use non-local display operations want remote display, vs. remote desktop. I can assure you that far more than 1% of X users would be very upset to lose remote display and have only remote desktop.
X's remote display was designed to work on a per-application basis. It was not designed to remote an entire desktop. Dismissing X's "vaunted network transparency" because it doesn't do what it was never designed to do is silly. X _is_ network transparent. You may say that the per-application design of the 1980's is not sufficient for all use-cases in 2013. Fine. What _I'm_ saying is that the use-cases X _was_ designed for are still legitimate and still matter to many people using X, and shouldn't be forgotten.
For the remote desktop fans, I do wonder how you manage it? My display at work is 3840x1080, and I have 8 workspaces of that size. My display at home is 1680x1050. My display on my laptop is 1280x960. How in the world does anyone get anything done trying to use a 3840x1080 remote desktop on these smaller displays? How do you manage switching workspaces inside the remote desktop, vs. switching workspaces on your local desktop? This is a serious question. I've never been able to be even close to productive with remote desktop and I can't figure out how it's supposed to work. It just seems SO limiting and SO confining, to not be able to have application windows that fit on my physical display, can be resized, moved to different workspaces, etc.
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Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 15, 2013 10:17 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Hmm. On my Ubuntu system remote desktop is trivial: no need to install anything (it's part of the base system). I select the "Desktop Sharing" applet and enable it, then when I need to connect from a remote system I use the "Remote Desktop Client", enter the server name and my password, and it just works. and remote desktop is not what I want and not what a lot of people currently using X want Can not both be right: if capability is not useful and is not asked-for then why it's there by default? The only problem: this capability is, again, implemented using a kludge. "Desktop Sharing" using the same trusty VNC with screen scraping, not the much-vaunted "X network transparency". I can understand why it's done this way but what it boils down to: "X network transparency" is a failure. If we want to propose a replacement then we need to develop something to support the most common usecase first and rare obscure usecase second - even if these are dear to you. The only meaningful statistic is how many X users who use non-local display operations want remote display, vs. remote desktop. Wow. Why do you think that it's "the only meaningful statistic"? Why do you think that people who left Linux for MacOS or Windows are not important? I'm seriously tempted to do that myself. I'm still with Linux because I like ThinkPads keyboards enough to cope with all that nonsense, but as time goes on and Lenovo makes them less and less usable in newer models I may decide that "enough is enough" and it's time to switch... I can assure you that far more than 1% of X users would be very upset to lose remote display and have only remote desktop. I'm not all that sure. By now a lot of these users are Ubuntu users and they don't know and don't care about all these old crufty stuff. I'm not sure if it's 90% by now or 99% by now, but you can be sure that old-timers who really know how to use all these incantations are in minority: that's why all these incantations are not there in a nice GUI wrappers in default installation, you know. Because few users care.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 15, 2013 17:15 UTC (Fri) by lyda (subscriber, #7429) [Link]
I use screen in my terminal windows. I have no trouble getting access to those.
The main graphical app I use is my web browser. I use Chrome. I click "new tab" and click "other devices" in the lower right hand part of the screen. Shows me everything I have open everywhere - desktops, phones, tablets.
I can access everything on my desktop remotely with little fuss even I have minimal bandwidth.
As for running other gui apps remotely, I just ssh -X to whatever machine I want (including ones without any desktop) and run the app I want.
I've used X11 desktops since 1990 and never really used Windows. The few times I did I found any remote solutions painful and slow even when they were nearby. Worse even than ssh-tunneled trans-Atlantic X11 apps.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 18, 2013 5:45 UTC (Mon) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]
Exactly my experience.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 15, 2013 10:26 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] For the remote desktop fans, I do wonder how you manage it? My display at work is 3840x1080, and I have 8 workspaces of that size. My display at home is 1680x1050. My display on my laptop is 1280x960. How in the world does anyone get anything done trying to use a 3840x1080 remote desktop on these smaller displays? Why do you think I would use 3840x1080 remote desktop? When you connect to remote desktop in Windows it can be resized to match your needs (yet-another-thing-which-oh-so-perfect-X-can't-do without a lot of tweaking). Windows will be rearranged, sure, but that's better then chase around all these huge windows on my small screen. How do you manage switching workspaces inside the remote desktop, vs. switching workspaces on your local desktop? If you make your remote desktop "full screen" then everything is sent to the remote system (except for one tunable sequence which makes it windowed). This means that I can easily switch between mode where all my shortcuts are used by remote system and another one where I must be careful because most of them are used for local system. It's not perfect arrangement, but works fine for most needs.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 0:21 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> When you connect to remote desktop in Windows it can be resized to match your needs
you are contradicting yourself
either you get a view of the existing desktop (which is a large size with windows spread out over the large space)
or you get a new desktop of whatever size you want and you open apps in the new desktop
My experience with RDP and Citrix is the second, but you have been claiming the first.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 0:32 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
That's not a contradiction at all, it's not either/or, to claim such indicates a lack of familiarity with the subject. When connecting to an existing session the screen resizes to whatever resolution you specify when you connect, just like if you changed resolution and hot unplugged any secondary displays. When you takeover the session logged into the console that way the console switches to the login screen. You can take the session over by logging in on the console.
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 16, 2013 2:17 UTC (Sat) by Serge (guest, #84957) [Link]
> When you connect to remote desktop in Windows it can be resized to match your needs (yet-another-thing-which-oh-so-perfect-X-can't-do without a lot of tweaking).
Of course X can do that easily: xrandr to the rescue. X just does not force you to a single solution. For example I prefer do not resize remote desktop, instead I allow vnc viewer to scale it locally, so I get a small view of remote desktop in a window.
X is a great thing, it allows you to do everything you want. :)
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Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 15, 2013 12:19 UTC (Fri) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
The only people who are saying that remote desktop is the only remoting method supported in Wayland instead of remote windows are totally, utterly, wrong. And have never even tried it. Actually, I think it's the other way around: I'm not sure remote desktop is really supported at all, bar kludges like remoting a new compositor.
The references to VNC and RDP were about the conceptual differences between sending a stream of rendering commands, and sending the pixel buffers. That's all, nothing else. I'm not referring to reimplementing VNC or RDP exactly 100% like-for-like with all its bugs and deficiencies, because why would we do that?
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 15, 2013 12:44 UTC (Fri) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
> The only people who are saying that remote desktop is the only remoting method supported in Wayland instead of remote windows are totally, utterly, wrong. And have never even tried it. Actually, I think it's the other way around: I'm not sure remote desktop is really supported at all, bar kludges like remoting a new compositor.
> I'm not referring to reimplementing VNC or RDP exactly 100% like-for-like with all its bugs and deficiencies, because why would we do that?
Besides, RDP actually supports remote windows for some time now.
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