[openbeos] Re: openbeos Digest V8 #104

Ryan Leavengood wrote:

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Raymond C. Rodgers <sinful622@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This is really good news if we're on the same page. Just to clarify, the X
forwarding that I'm referring to isn't just about running VNC, it would be
analogous to having the app_server on machine B managing and executing a
program and all of the user interaction occurs on machine A, and for all
intents and purpose the program looks as if it is running on machine A.


I could be wrong and feel free to correct me, but isn't this networked
nature of X part of the reason it can perform so poorly sometimes on a
local machine? In other words, I think it would be pretty important to
add something like this to Haiku without slowing it down too much
(preferably not at all.) If it can be done like that, I am all for it
and agree it would be cool and useful.
I haven't seen any particular slow down of the local X interface when doing this or otherwise when compatible & proper graphics drivers are installed. (I'd like to note for the record however, that I'm unable to get accelerated video under Fedora 9 at the moment because the ATI/AMD proprietary drivers for whatever reason aren't compatible with the kernel and X version in Fedora 9.) The big problem on most Linux distributions as far as user interface is concerned is getting the proper and compatible drivers and getting them installed right. Sometimes they're there right from the start, sometimes it's simple to get them and get them installed, other times it's a kernel patching nightmare if they're available at all. That's something that Haiku will have to worry about to some extent, but driver installation in BeOS/Haiku will probably always be easier than any distribution of Linux. Not back to the point; I haven't seen any slow down particularly associated with this usage, though of course network speed will affect the application's performance. 
Given the nature of the app_server, I suspect it could be done fairly
easily, like François was saying. Applications would just need to make
sure they behave properly before being used on a networked app_server.
Very true, but even without this functionality, developers should try to make sure their apps behave properly. It would be nice to have some sort of tool that can identify bad or missing behavior in an app; perhaps something that can be compiled in during development to identify these areas, then when they're fixed, be compiled out. 
You don't get a desktop in a window like with VNC or Window's Remote
Desktop Connection, just the application's windows.


I am not a big fan of VNC myself (always feels a bit slow), but I have
always been pretty impressed with the Windows RDP stuff. In general I
am anti-Microsoft, but in this case they did a good job. If we could
borrow some of the ideas for that, it would be cool. Also as far as I
know it is possible to run RDP applications in an application window.

Ryan
It may be possible, but I've only seen RDP applications running within a "desktop" window. Another nice feature of RDP is the ability to play sounds locally, and mount local drives and printers on the remote machine so that it can use them as if they were directly attached to that machine. 

Raymond

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