Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#31

Post by mdaniel »

nerflad wrote: post #27
mdaniel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your situation is anything like mine, it goes much more like: "oh, neat; I'll look at that tonight" followed by a browser bounce, or something else becoming a bigger priority, lather, rinse, repeat. There is so much great content -- both "empty calories" and otherwise -- that it is so easy to get buried under it. I came to HN to retrieve _one specific link_ and ended up with 7 new browser tabs open, counting this…

HN Tabs are like an unstoppable cancer. I'm on XFCE and I have a whole workspace dedicated to over a year's worth of articles, books, discussions, etc from HN that "I'll eventually get around to reading".

To say nothing of the gigs of research paper PDFs; hey, we're all going to need _something_ to do during retirement, right?

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#32

Post by mdaniel »

eric-hu wrote: post #28
mdaniel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your situation is anything like mine, it goes much more like: "oh, neat; I'll look at that tonight" followed by a browser bounce, or something else becoming a bigger priority, lather, rinse, repeat. There is so much great content -- both "empty calories" and otherwise -- that it is so easy to get buried under it. I came to HN to retrieve _one specific link_ and ended up with 7 new browser tabs open, counting this…

I block HN on my computer etc hosts file. If I want something to stick, I have to discover it on mobile or my iPad and jump through an extra hoop to get new links on my desktop. I find the added friction is nice for reducing "empty calorie" links.

reducing "empty calorie" links

Heh, I actually meant things like "LA to Vegas", "Family Guy", and the like, but yes, I can believe there are empty calorie HN links, too

I presume you're aware of the "noprocrast" and "minaway" settings on your HN profile? Using `/etc/hosts` is some hard-core HN Addicts Anonymous level stuff :-)

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#33

Post by fsiefken »

While the geekery is really really cool I also wonder if this method can be beaten with the best in video comepression. Extremely low bandwidth encoding perhaps provides better results (if you put cpu/gpu load aside), for example see this x265 example over 50 Kbit/s. http://wp.xin.at/archives/4020/comment-page-1 People are watching Netflix in low quality in 100-200 Kbit/s. With the upcoming AV! (AOmedia Video 1) it gets even beter. Another avenue is Citrix/RDP connection work ok over 30-50 Kbit/s. Then there is the counterpart FreeRDP. Wouldn't FreeRDP be the preferred solution here, except then that Mosh solves the potential latency issue? With linux desktops running on low power clients already, why bother? Does it use less battery life so you can get 48 hours surfing the internet in the mountains or forest while the solar powered server runs at home?

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#34

Post by pvdebbe »

shakna wrote: post #19
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #18

> Why not VNC? Why not ssh -Y and use X protocol as intended?

> sometimes I don't have very good Internet. If all I have is a 3kbps connection I don't think X would handle that very well, and you may not have an X server at the other side.

3 kbps is not enough for smooth TTY text-only ssh either...

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#37

Post by rostigerpudel »

erikb wrote: post #35

Why not stream X directly over ssh?

Because X over SSH requires a somewhat low latency and high bandwidth. The guy's requirement is unpredictable latency and low bandwidth (like 3 kbps). X is no fun at all over that kind of connection.

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#38

Post by Fnoord »

Given the quality of text (or the requirement to zoom) I'm not sure what the fuss is about. It looks abysmal, and having to zoom all the time is a habit I am glad we got rid of due to higher resolutions. Though still existing on mobile devices it is also user-friendlier to zoom there, and the reason for the feature is the device is more mobile.

You could already run a browser in a framebuffer for ages. Which means you're not bound to X11. My friend, X11 hater (he was former Amiga user), just used CLI and a CLI web browser (well, he used Emacs) but sometimes he did need GUI and that was his solution. We're talking end of '90s/begin of '00s here during a time where X didn't even compositing.

If you want to run X11 over SSH, that's also possible, e.g. via NX Server. Another route could be SDN plus (Free)RDP. Mosh is great for latency, tho can't be used for SSH over Tor due to UDP.

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#40

Post by tombh »

Author here. Surprised to see this here as I've been literally spending the last 2 weeks on a complete rewrite from scratch that actually layers REAL text over the blocks. You can get an idea of my approach with this function: https://github.com/tombh/texttop/blob/webext-rewrite/webext/...

After the success of hitting the front page here last year, I really wanted to sit down and do this properly. So not only am I working on real text support (that you can of course copy and paste without even zooming). But I've removed the dependencies on ffmpeg, Xorg (for Firefox at least - Chrome strangely doesn't support webextensions in headless mode), docker AND it will work on all webextension-compatible browsers. It's going to be a single cross-platform, static, Go binary, that launches your preferred browser in the background.

Generally it's bad luck to talk about something before it's finished, but seeing as it's suddenly on the front page I wanted to let all those interested know that I'm making this 10 times better. And an early apology, because I'll definitely be posting the rewrite (and rename) here and hoping to get all your attention again.

Post reply on HN