Re: a good PC?

On Sun, 10 Dec 2006 03:34:10 +0000, jasen wrote:

On 2006-12-09, AZ Nomad <aznomad.2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 09 Dec 2006 22:04:03 GMT, David Brown <david.brown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That depends on the type of terminal server connection you are using.
With traditional networked X, you are correct - the X server runs on the
user's local machine, along with a some local X clients (such as the
window manager), while other clients run on the server. But a more
modern, and often more useful, setup is to use VNC or nx for the
communication. This requires far less of the client (and can thus easily
work with a windows client, without needing cygwin, xming, or any other X
server, or with a very simple thin client), and far less of the network
(ideal for working outside the office). In this case, the X server itself
(such as vncserver) is on the server.

That's exactly wrong. VNC uses far more network bandwidth as it transmitts
bitmaps instead of high level instructions. VNC is great for controlling
systems that aren't designed for remote GUIs such as windows 9X, but is
otherwise mediocre as it'll spend far more time sending graphics and will often
miss transmissions of modified screen areas. Often menus will fail to appear
because VNC missed the screen modification whereas remote X will never miss
such activity.

To some extent. some x applications (eg early versions of freeciv) call xlib
once for each pixel update, that's fast enough on the console, but crawls over a
network connection. for the most part though you're right X is faster than
vnc.


As often, it is a case of YMMV. Basic VNC transmits large bitmaps, and
therefore uses a lot of network bandwidth, but more advanced VNC's use a
lot of compression and track screen changes, to minimise the traffic. And
if you have the right combinations of VNC client and server versions, the
server can track the screen at a lower level and send change commands
rather than the bitmaps (this is certainly true for the windows version
of tightvnc - I haven't tested it on the *nix versions).

For some types of application, X uses much less data because it sends meta
data rather than the final bitmaps. However, X uses orders of magnitude
more packets than VNC, so if your network has significant latency (such as
over the internet), then X suffers greatly. The whole concept of
NoMachine nx is to collect X packets and send them as bunches to minimise
latency.

Thus X works well enough over an ethernet connection, but is barely
useable for anything more than xclock via ADSL. VNC will use up more
bandwidth, but is perfectly practical over ADSL for many things (not
graphically demanding applications like EDA, however), especially with a
modern accelerated version. It is also the most cross-platform system,
and the easiest to set up and use. nx is the most network friendly, but
is not as simply to get working.



Bye.
Jasen
.

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