The irony

Posted Nov 5, 2010 3:33 UTC (Fri) by bjacob (guest, #58566)
In reply to: The irony by martinfick
Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity on Wayland

My point was that the whole idea of a network transparent protocol like X is now looking obsolete. It is, if you want, trying to do network transparency at a level that now appears like the wrong level (given current hardware, and given how the browser is successful with its different model).

Then, about your point that least the network transparency of X should come for free when the server is local --- no idea, letting others reply here. But what's the point of a network protocol if it's going to be less and less used with remote servers.

The irony

Posted Nov 5, 2010 11:47 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link] (8 responses)

I strongly disagree. X does network transparency at the right level, or at least a much better level than any other current system.

The irony

Posted Nov 5, 2010 12:58 UTC (Fri) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link] (7 responses)

> X does network transparency at the right level,

Over the network VNC have been working better for me than X especially on high-latency links. That tells that from a practical point of view X alone does not provide the right answer.

The irony

Posted Nov 5, 2010 15:23 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

* Citrix ICA
* Microsoft RDP
* Redhat Spice

VNC is not the only game in town, of course. X Windows networking is, indeed, very very cool. But it's been a very long time since it had any sort of monopoly over remote applications.

Windows users have been enjoying Windows-apps-over-internet for many many years now.

Does anybody have a good how many people use 'Go to My PC'? It's a huge number and they all do it over the internet and it works far better, far easier, then X Windows does.

The irony

Posted Nov 5, 2010 15:54 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (5 responses)

This is all based on the fact that the X implementation (the Xorg stack) we use daily isn't particularly efficient.

As I've already said below, if you want an apples to apples comparison see Nomachine's NX. As I said, I use it daily, and my experience is extremely positive.

And yes, it's open source.

The irony

Posted Nov 6, 2010 22:17 UTC (Sat) by ceswiedler (guest, #24638) [Link] (4 responses)

Slight correction: there's an open, but somewhat old, version of NX. Recent versions maintained by Nomachine are free-as-in-beer for noncommercial use.

NX is excellent and I highly recommend it for remote X access, even on a local network since it provides session restoration and "just works". From what I understand, it compresses extremely well due to the nature of the X protocol, since it can see when things actually need to be sent to the client. A VNC or RDP server by comparison only has the final rendered product.

The irony

Posted Nov 7, 2010 11:24 UTC (Sun) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (3 responses)

No, you are wrong, see http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php

The sources for the core transport libraries are all there.

The missing stuff is the end-user application code, which they make money from.

The irony

Posted Nov 7, 2010 20:41 UTC (Sun) by dtlin (subscriber, #36537) [Link] (2 responses)

http://www.nomachine.com/redesigned-core.php

The new core of NX 4.0 is made up of a set of libraries written from the ground up to ensure portability, flexibility and state-of-the art performance. NX 4.0 core libraries will not be made open source. Although NX 3.x core compression technology and earlier versions will remain GPL, NoMachine engineers will not be developing the code further.

The irony

Posted Nov 7, 2010 21:27 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

Use http://code.google.com/p/neatx/

The irony

Posted Nov 8, 2010 17:12 UTC (Mon) by dtlin (subscriber, #36537) [Link]

neatx is a wrapper for the 3.x NX core libraries, much like NoMachine's nxserver.

It does not support the NX 4.0 progress, and never will because there's nobody working on it anymore and the libraries are not open.