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The State of Remote Desktops?
frenchgates writes "It became clear to me (when my main machine had to be sent away for repairs for a week) that it's high time to finally divorce myself from any particular computer by using data and software accessible from any internet connected computer as much as possible. I'm talking Visual IDEs, productivity apps, powerful, easy to use email client, etc, all presented to me consistently from computer to computer on my remote virtual desktop. Is anyone seriously trying this? What are the best practices and best applications? What are the biggest shortcomings? What if I limit my demand to "accessible from any internet connected Windows machine with Java installed?" Are there good web sites devoted to this noble goal?"
it's high time to finally divorce myself from any particular computer by using data and software accessible from any internet connected computer as much as possible.
:)
The problem is, even if you're doing everything remotely, you're pretty much stuck using one computer as a central repository for everything--programs and data. Unless you are planning on keeping sensitive data all over the place, it all has to physically reside somewhere.
And if you do replicate everything, what about keeping consistency?? This problem you have will always be around. Okay, so you use Hotmail as your email client so you can access it from everywhere...what about a Hotmail outage, or MS goes out of business?
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
If you want to be served graphics over a link, and want responsiveness and resolution, then you will require a high speed connection. Add to that the thought that if you plan to have a virtual desktop encompassing a large data store, you're talking about having this on-line somewhere and again you are talking about a good high speed connection. And of course, storage space.
For many of us , good high-speed connections are still the holy grail and things like VNC sort of work over the Internet, but if your server machine goes away, suddenly you don't have access to your data, etc. and over a slow link, VNC is kind of choppy.
As the ubiquity of high speed links grows, and the cost of on-line storage and access goes down, and as the feasibility of decent data-security goes up, this kind of idea should become more generally interesting. It isn't a bad idea now... it just isn't a terribly viable business for anyone to get into yet I don't expect.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
You need to start using X11. The Windows API - embodied in Win32 - simply has troubles if you "remote" it.
You need to start using a remotable ("network transparent") windowing system. All your apps will come with it. All of the modern windowing systems (X11 Be whatever Apple calls NeXTStep now) are network transparent. Use a modern OS and a modern windowing system will come along for the ride.
Oh wait - you want Word I mean "productivity apps" to come along? I think you're stuck with being tied to a particular computer. And the situation there will only get worse - DMCA and newer EULAs are going to make it harder and harder to do things like have a backup use a remote desktop etc etc.
Remote administration is not the same as a true virtual desktop. Try to imagine yourself in his situation before offering a solution - would you want to do all your work all the time over VNC? I wouldn't. I wouldn't mind it so much over TS or X.
Besides, VNC doesn't include encryption. You can tunnel it through a VPN or SSH or IPSEC etc, but that's it.
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE VNC - I use it at EVERY client site as a remote administration and troubleshooting tool on Windows. I've sat on the mailing list in the past. Quentin Stafford-Fraiser, Wez & co at AT&T labs and Cambridge U. do an OUTSTANDING job - but there are limitations (in MS Windows, mind you - not VNC) that make it not so great for Windows remote desktop applications. Built in encryption would be nice too.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
Web based anything blows! (Well now that I got that out of the way) The net, and even local networks I've found to be far more unreliable than a local machine. I think you'd find the downtime because of any number of network, server, internet or ISP failures to be far more problematic than a single machine failure.
Just have a plan for a fast recovery (I.e. actually BACKUP you data frequently) should there actually be a catestrophic failure of your local machine.
Getting to your mail or data is sort of nice as a secondary interface, but with all the security problems involved, and it's general flakiness/slowness all around in accessing your programs or data over even a LOCAL network, I've never understood the want.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Ok there are several ways of doing this on a windows network or even a non windows network. Samba or a NT server, it doesn't matter.
For the most basic way to get your profile across a network, just change your user account's profile to point to some network share. Now anytime you log in, your desktop, screen settings, ect will be accessable as long as your programs are installed on the network too.
Samba does sorta make this easier, with the whole $HOME directory analogy.
It's that easy, none of this VNC crap. If you wanted to switch enviroments from windows to *nix you could telnet into a *nix machine, you could use reflectionX to get a remote X display on your windows machine. Best yet you could use a *nix machine to connect to a *nix machine because that would be so l33t0 kR4d D00D.
It doesn't need to be overengineered, just go to your user manager and set the profile path.