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Joe Pfeiffer
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 Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:17 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
| Quote: | Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
Another thing that's close to the user that would be nice
to have would be support for removable storage (nowadays mostly USB
sticks).
USB sticks are something else different enough from the gui that I
don't see why it should be integrated.
X is a connection between the remote machine and a machine close to
the user. It would be convenient if the remote machine could talk to
a USB stick plugged into the machine close to the user. One way to do
this would be by piggybacking the traffic to the USB stick onto the X
traffic; an alternative would be to do it through ssh.
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Tunneling more through ssh does sound interesting... |
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Anton Ertl
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:29 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
| Quote: | The thing is, X wants to move stuff to your workstation, not nearby
workstations.
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Well, often your workstation knows how to print on the printer you
want to print on, even if that printer is connected to a different
machine.
Ok, that's not true of my X-terminal at the office, but if there was
printing through X, it would know how to print.
| Quote: | Your example of being able to print at home is one that resonates with
me -- except that I've got two desktops and two laptops at home, and
only one of the four has a printer.
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But I guess all four can use that printer, right?
| Quote: | AFAIK there was some work on printing in some X Consortion version of
X; googling for it, I find mentions of:
|X Print Extension Protocol
|X Version 11, Release 6.4
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|X Print Extension Library
|X Version 11, Release 6.4
However, according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xprint> this
extension is deprecated.
Wasn't aware it was now deprecated, but I sure never had any luck with
it...
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From what I read, it seems to have somewhat different (and more
ambitious) goals than what I outlined.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Anton Ertl
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:36 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
| Quote: | anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
X is a connection between the remote machine and a machine close to
the user. It would be convenient if the remote machine could talk to
a USB stick plugged into the machine close to the user. One way to do
this would be by piggybacking the traffic to the USB stick onto the X
traffic; an alternative would be to do it through ssh.
Tunneling more through ssh does sound interesting...
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I guess the tunneling part is the easy part, but one would probably
have to mount the stick in some way on the remote system, and it
should only be accessible by the user. If we want near-universal
support (i.e., many platforms) for that, that's quite a lot of work.
In Linux, one can probably implement it through FUSE.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Joe Pfeiffer
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:13 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
| Quote: | Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
The thing is, X wants to move stuff to your workstation, not nearby
workstations.
Well, often your workstation knows how to print on the printer you
want to print on, even if that printer is connected to a different
machine.
Ok, that's not true of my X-terminal at the office, but if there was
printing through X, it would know how to print.
Your example of being able to print at home is one that resonates with
me -- except that I've got two desktops and two laptops at home, and
only one of the four has a printer.
But I guess all four can use that printer, right?
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Yes -- my point exactly. While working on a school machine from home,
I don't necessarily want to print from the machine I'm working from.
As you say above in the post I'm responding to, the machine I'm on
knows how to print to other machines on my network -- but this seems
like an argument for tunnelling IPP over ssh, not printing from X. |
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Joe Pfeiffer
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:14 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
| Quote: | Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
X is a connection between the remote machine and a machine close to
the user. It would be convenient if the remote machine could talk to
a USB stick plugged into the machine close to the user. One way to do
this would be by piggybacking the traffic to the USB stick onto the X
traffic; an alternative would be to do it through ssh.
Tunneling more through ssh does sound interesting...
I guess the tunneling part is the easy part, but one would probably
have to mount the stick in some way on the remote system, and it
should only be accessible by the user. If we want near-universal
support (i.e., many platforms) for that, that's quite a lot of work.
In Linux, one can probably implement it through FUSE.
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Come to think of it, now that your bring up FUSE, it would probably be
pretty straightforward to do it with sshfs. |
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John Thompson
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 6:25 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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On 2008-08-20, Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
| Quote: | Temoto <temotor@gmail.com> writes:
...
There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
What do you mean with "network friendly"? That I have to buy a
higher-bandwidth network connection for more money from my network
provider?
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I'm not entirely sure what the OP meant, but VNC by default compresses
its traffic, so it reqires less bandwidth. Yes, you can get X traffic
compressed as well, but it doesn't happen by default.
IMO, VNC's nicest feature is its stateless display. I can use it on one
machine, close it, and go to another machine and pick up exactly where I
left off.
--
John (john@os2.dhs.org)
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com ** |
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Tim Roberts
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 7:08 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Temoto <temotor@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
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That statement is provably false.
--
Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. |
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Peter Köhlmann
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 7:08 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Temoto wrote:
< snip >
| Quote: | There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
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You have heard wrong
| Quote: | Anyway, you're limited to screen and keyboard/mouse.
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Wrong
| Quote: | There is no remote sound
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Wrong
Pray tell, what is the remote printer sitting on the network in my setup
doing then? As well as the remote scanner and the remote fax?
| Quote: | . Those are equally part of user
interface along with screen and keyboard.
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Fine. Please, demonstrate that you know what you are talking about then
< snip >
--
This problem was sponsored by Microsoft |
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Anton Ertl
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:31 pm Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
| Quote: | anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
I guess the tunneling part is the easy part, but one would probably
have to mount the stick in some way on the remote system, and it
should only be accessible by the user. If we want near-universal
support (i.e., many platforms) for that, that's quite a lot of work.
In Linux, one can probably implement it through FUSE.
Come to think of it, now that your bring up FUSE, it would probably be
pretty straightforward to do it with sshfs.
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Yes. I see the following problems:
1) One needs FUSE and sshfs on the remote machine. But something like
that is unavoidable, as mentioned above.
2) If I understand it correctly, sshfs needs an sshd on a machine
where the USB stick is mounted. I don't have sshd on my home machine,
and I don't want it (nobody has to log into there). I would prefer if
I could set up an ssh tunnel from my home machine to the remote
machine, and if a version of sshfs could work through that.
3) As a variation of the above, even if the machine I work from has an
sshd, I usually cannot log into it from the remote machines with
public-key-authentication, but instead need a password (unlike the
other direction). With the ssh-tunnel setup described above, I would
avoid having to type the password, which is not just annoying, but
also a security risk.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Anton Ertl
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
| Quote: | anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
Your example of being able to print at home is one that resonates with
me -- except that I've got two desktops and two laptops at home, and
only one of the four has a printer.
But I guess all four can use that printer, right?
Yes -- my point exactly. While working on a school machine from home,
I don't necessarily want to print from the machine I'm working from.
As you say above in the post I'm responding to, the machine I'm on
knows how to print to other machines on my network -- but this seems
like an argument for tunnelling IPP over ssh, not printing from X.
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My idea was that if we tunneled through X, the X server would accept
the print job and pass it to lpr (or CUPS or whatever), and that would
know how to print on the printer you want, even if it's on a different
machine than your X server.
But yes, printing through an ssh tunnel would be ok, too.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Anton Ertl
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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John Thompson <john@vector.os2.dhs.org> writes:
| Quote: | On 2008-08-20, Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
Temoto <temotor@gmail.com> writes:
...
There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
What do you mean with "network friendly"? That I have to buy a
higher-bandwidth network connection for more money from my network
provider?
I'm not entirely sure what the OP meant, but VNC by default compresses
its traffic, so it reqires less bandwidth.
|
AFAIK VNC transfers screen contents all the time, so it requires very
much more bandwidth than X. Compression helps a little, but does not
make up for the basic inefficiency. I have heard that they have put
optimizations in for more efficient transfer, but also that these
optimizations are based on something similar to the way X transfers
its graphics commands.
| Quote: | Yes, you can get X traffic
compressed as well, but it doesn't happen by default.
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I also would not want the machines on our LAN to waste their CPU
cycles with compressing and uncompressing X traffic to save bandwidth on
a network that has enough bandwidth.
And when I'm doing X across the internet, I use X over ssh, which
allows me to use compression if I need it.
| Quote: | IMO, VNC's nicest feature is its stateless display. I can use it on one
machine, close it, and go to another machine and pick up exactly where I
left off.
|
That's certainly nice, but I doubt that the OP meant that with
"network-friendly".
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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GPS
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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Anton Ertl wrote:
| Quote: | John Thompson <john@vector.os2.dhs.org> writes:
On 2008-08-20, Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
Temoto <temotor@gmail.com> writes:
...
There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
What do you mean with "network friendly"? That I have to buy a
higher-bandwidth network connection for more money from my network
provider?
I'm not entirely sure what the OP meant, but VNC by default compresses
its traffic, so it reqires less bandwidth.
AFAIK VNC transfers screen contents all the time, so it requires very
much more bandwidth than X. Compression helps a little, but does not
make up for the basic inefficiency. I have heard that they have put
optimizations in for more efficient transfer, but also that these
optimizations are based on something similar to the way X transfers
its graphics commands.
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IIRC VNC doesn't transfer screen contents all of the time. I wrote a
VNC client, and my impression was that the client periodically sends out
an update request, and the server sends back a series of rectangle
updates (depending on the encoding). I used the copyrect encoding for
my client. If there are no updates my impression was that the server
waits until there are some, and then sends more rectangles. It only
sends the rectangles for the damaged/changed areas, unless you request a
non-incremental update.
Another thing to consider is nomachine. Several people I know have been
using the nomachine product. It's an open source alternative to VNC
with builtin audio that they say is faster:
http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php
I haven't used it, but I've found that packages are available for
Linux and BSD.
George |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:11 am Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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k what was the discussion? i think we've got the idea that remote
things is cool.
so we're not going to remove tcp/ip from X.. but it doesnt answer the
question
if it should be used for a standalone non-networked machine. are there
other
ways for an X server to communicate with each other, i.e for a
multihead setup? |
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Temoto
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:07 pm Post subject: Re: Obsoleteness of X concept |
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On Aug 22, 11:07 am, Peter Köhlmann <peter.koehlm...@arcor.de> wrote:
| Quote: | Temoto wrote:
snip
There is crossplatform VNC. I've heard that its protocol is much more
network friendly than one of X.
You have heard wrong
Anyway, you're limited to screen and keyboard/mouse.
Wrong
There is no remote sound
Wrong
and printers in X
Pray tell, what is the remote printer sitting on the network in my setup
doing then? As well as the remote scanner and the remote fax?
. Those are equally part of user
interface along with screen and keyboard.
Fine. Please, demonstrate that you know what you are talking about then
snip
--
This problem was sponsored by Microsoft
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Suppose, i have a box at home and i connect to it from job office. Run
PDF viewer at home machine through ssh-tunneling of X protocol. When i
press 'Print', it is completely useless for me to have page printed at
home. And i have no way to set up remote printer sharing at home.
Good solution would be to tunnel printing along with graphics and
keyboard/mouse through X through ssh, so i print at office. But i have
no such option, right? |
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