Re: Some perspective from the cheap seats...

On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 12:46:25PM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> Alan Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > I'd ask a different question with my general networking hat on.
> > Bandwidth is rising pretty much exponentially to many users.
> > Latency is nearly a constant and in some cases (cable/ADSL) has
> > increased. On that background the question becomes "Is the X model
> > wrong for remote computing due to round trip times". VNC for
> > example significantly outperforms X (with compress) for remote use
> > of Gnome on 802.11b 
> 
> Very good point. The downside of course is the VNC is a 'remote desktop' 
> system much like PC Anywhere for Windows machines. You can't run a remote 
> VNC application integrated 'seamlessly' into your desktop via VNC (or PC 
> Anywhere). But it does solve the remote access problem in a different 
> way, and it may well be that for most uses a VNC style approach is 
> perfectly suitable. In the old days remote access was nice for network 
> servers because you could run GUI tools from the remote machine, but 
> these days with stuff like WebMin who needs to run server config stuff 
> remotely via X? You can now do everything you need via a neat web 
> interface that you can access from any machine.

That raises two wishes for X development from me:

1. a more efficient protocol that can be used for remote acess over 
slower lines like ADSL or modems. People looking at terminal Server
solutions like LTSP is aking for this.

2. A system like Suns Xray where a user can leave one terminal and
log on at another, and just continue from where s/he left. Also so
that a say teacher may take over the control of the pupil's
screen and help the pupil.

Best regards
keld