Remote Desktop Backend Merged into Wayland

New submitter Skrapion writes "One month ago, an independent developer submitted patches to the Wayland's Weston compositor which adds support for FreeRDP, an open-source remote desktop protocol. Now, after six revisions, the remote desktop code has been merged into the trunk. While remote desktop has been prototyped in Weston once before by Wayland developer Kristian Høgsberg, this is the first time Wayland/Weston has officially supported the feature. For a summary of why we can expect Wayland's remote desktop to surpass X.Org's network transparency, see Daniel Stone's excellent talk from Linux.conf.au."

Comments

Nothing Compares To X11 Transparency!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the past 10 years I have been repeatedly lambasted for complaining that RDP and ICA were superior to X11 transparency and VNC with seemingly nothing being done to address the issue. Naturally, this made me a clueless troll. Blah, blah blah.

Now, with RDP copied and inserted into Wayland "we can expect Wayland's remote desktop to surpass X.Org's network transparency".

Fan boys are pathetic. LOL. I for one, welcome any improvement over X11 transparency and VNC. Anything at all.

Re:Nothing Compares To X11 Transparency!

[CajunArson]

Even better... watch the full video and you'll note that any version of X that isn't in a museum does not actually implement network transparency anymore (instead it's more of a network fallback to a less-capable graphics display).

An important feature for me

[etnoy]

This is excellent news and has changed my mind regarding Wayland. A successor to X11 really needs good remote control functionality, but it doesn't have to be done the way X11 did it. I now look forward to a future with Wayland.

Re:An important feature for me

[kobaz]

The way X11 does forwarding is very handy and useful, and I make use of it fairly often. But as usual, there's more than one proverbial way to skin the proverbial cat.

X11 forwarding is great for high speed and low latency connections such as a lan. Using it on anything else is asking for trouble, because if you lose your connection, you lose your app. Perhaps an improvement can be made to X11 forwarding in the new path forward (wayland) to make it more like screen where you can attach and detach to a running X11 app from a networked endpoint.

Remote desktop using RDP is superior to X11 forwarding for lossy connections because once the screen is loaded, very minimal draw/drag/etc communications are sent between the server and client for updates, X11 is far more data intensive for screen updates. And of course if you lose your connection (which I frequently do, trying to RDP from my cell phone), you'll get your apps back when you reconnect.

Having both X11 forwarding and RDP is a great choice, and I hope something similar to my aforementioned improvement makes it into the app.

For those About to Whine!

[CajunArson]

We don't Salute You!

For the next 100 posts whining about how this isn't exactly like forwarding an Xterm over an SSH tunnel (think about how stupid that is for a second)... X IS NOT NETWORK TRANSPARENT

What? That a lie! 1985 sez X is network transparent!
Well guess what: Modern versions of X are *not* network transparent anymore because to use any of the modern features of X that make using a modern Linux desktop even remotely enjoyable, you are breaking the classic backwards server-client paradigm of X. Sure, there's still a fallback mode for transferring data over networks, but lots and lots of modern features that you expect in a modern desktop GUI break in the process, which is *not* transparency, but is instead more of a network fallback.

Frankly, having tried to use both X and RDP over real connections using the real Internet, I'd take RDP any day of the week. I still remember the finger-pointing amongst developers of different projects when I pointed out that packets were being sent over the network each and every time my cursor blinked. Get over it guys, 1985 wasn't the be-all end-all pinnacle of graphics development.

Still don't believe me? How about clicking the link to Dan's talk about X where he says the exact same thing I just said. He's only been working on X development for over 10 years though, so I'm sure that some guy who sorta got X forwarding working over a gigabit link is much much more informed that he is....

Re:For those About to Whine!

[Alioth]

That's just pedantry.

In terms of "network transparent", what is meant is that a program doesn't care (it just communicates with whatever DISPLAY is set to) and the end user doesn't care. What the server does behind the scenes is irrelevant to how it's used.

If on Wayland, while you're in an SSH session to a remote machine you think..."hmm, I could really do with a couple of wterms" (or whatever the Wayland xterm equivalent is), or "I could really do with firing up wireshark", you can't just type "xterm" and be done then it's not network transparent to the user. If you then have to set up another session and do some desktop-style login (and the remote server has to be running some sort of GUI login manager or equivalent to handle it) then it's a lot less useful than what you get with X11 at the moment.

If on the other hand Wayland will allow the equivalent of ssh -X, then it doesn't matter how it's implemented, so long as the program running at the other end runs and doesn't care that the display is remote, and the user sees a window on their screen, then they have the functional equivalent however it's implemented.

Re:For those About to Whine!

[Skrapion]

The Wayland devs were definitely a little too obscure whenever the issue of remoting came up. They kept saying that remoting was out of scope with regard to Wayland, and technically, they were right, but it lead to a lot of misunderstandings.

Imagine if somebody asked "Does the Linux kernel support email?" Of course it doesn't; email is done way higher in the stack. There's not a single line of code in the Linux kernel that has anything to do with email. But you would be giving people the wrong impression if you said "Linux doesn't support email", and that's exactly what the Wayland devs were doing.

Those who do not understand X11

[Anonymous Coward]

Are doomed to re-implement it. Poorly.

Re:Those who do not understand X11

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody understands X11 then,

A true statement has just been spoken...

Re:Those who do not understand X11

[serviscope_minor]

all that needs to happen is enough of us to care less about your precious remote X functionality and you'll be forced to ditch it

Sigh. Linux used to be the world of possibilities where unusual behaviour was expected and no one in their right mind would put up barriers to their fellow hacker.

What happened?

Re:Rootless?

[barjam]

Whatever it does RDP is far, far faster and more versatile than X forwarding. X forwarding is slow and buggy to the point that I use vnc on my unix servers and vnc is awful.

Re:Rootless?

[quetwo]

A few things :
  - Microsoft RDP clients are pre-installed on every Windows based client since Windows XP/Server 2003. This means that a majority of non-slashdot-reading admins have all the tools they need to connect to it already installed.
  - Microsoft RDP is a lot faster than VNC/X11 forwarding. For one, they do smart bitmap-caching. VNC is screen-shots only (using some sensing of what has changed on the screen to send the diffs), and X11 forwarding were pretty much just UI elements, which made interacting with certain applications difficult or ackward.
  - Later RDP versions allow you to forward just specific applications, in addition to the entire workspace. I don't know if FreeRDP supports this feature yet, but it is built into the protocol.

Re:Rootless?

[KingMotley]

RDP has been able to forward the display of a single application for 5+ years.

Re:Rootless?

[Lussarn]

So the cure to remote performance is to rewrite modern applications to 80 era style, because writing a display server that handles modern apps is doomed to be implemented badly...

Dude, just listen to yourself.

Re:That You, Fanboy?

[CajunArson]

1. As I told another poster, Network Forwarding != Network Transparency. You know how modern X servers operate over a network? By pushing a bunch of bitmaps in a less-efficient manner than RDP. I really don't care if some dusty design document from 1985 says otherwise, you're irrational wishes don't create a new reality. Unless you are a real fossil, I was probably doing X forwarding before you even new what Linux was, and I know much much more about its limitations than you do.
2. If you're calling me a liar, you're also calling the main developers of the X server and Wayland liars because they agree with me and not with you.

If arrogance, ignorance, and disrespect for people who do hard work could be trasmuted into display server code, you would control the market!