Gate One Will Support X11: Fast Enough To Run VLC In Your Browser

Riskable writes "Ever seen a remote desktop tool that's fast/efficient enough to play back video? Gate One will soon have that capability via the forthcoming X11 support (as demonstrated in the video). I am posting this to Slashdot looking for suggestions and feedback as to how I should move forward with it before I solidify the architecture, API, and even the business end of it (making money). I'll be watching the thread and replying to comments (as I have time). Also, if you're interested you can sign up to be notified when it's available." We've posted a few stories about Gate One previously.

Comments

The network says no

[girlintraining]

Look, the protocol could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It could have free orgasms built into it. It might even have the cure for cancer.

But it can't overcome latency, or shannon's law regarding just how much data you can shove over a given network link. You can cheat by using lossful compression, you can employ predictive algorithms, but at the end of the day it'll only be as good as the network lets it. That's why there haven't been any big advancements in this area: There's none to make. Remote desktop will be varying degrees of shitty for the forseeable future, because our network links are shit. ISPs purposefully sabotage remote desktop and VPN because it's a threat to their business model. You can't "protocol" that away. Believe me, people have tried.

At best, we'll be able to trade one variety of crap for another, but remote desktop will never come close to the experience of actually using the computer at the same location. Human beings start to notice lag between their own actions and computer responses in as little as 50ms. The network links typically take longer than that to send the data. Especially over wifi.

Re:The network says no

[X0563511]

Because it took 2 hours to encode that 1080p video, and that's an awful lot of latency.

Re:The network says no

[h4rr4r]

Because youtube is not interactive.
This means it can cache to get to 1080p and that temporary slowdowns are of no concern. With RDP/X11/SPICE you have to have an interactive connection. That means anything you do to get a smoother desktop like caching ends up making the interaction slower.

Re:The network says no

[Octorian]

Latency... Latency.... Latency...

When you're streaming 1080p video, its fine to have a buffer several seconds or minutes long to cover any hicups on the network. For remote desktop use, not so much.

Re:WTF?

[wiredlogic]

Vaporware doesn't generally have a repository on Github.