Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
mjg59.dreamwidth.org
Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
1–10 of 479 posts
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#2As a software dev, I like using whatever as a local env but SSH'ing into something more powerful to perform any heavy lifting. There's also tools like VSCode Remote that make it almost like developing locally. That said, the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro. These things are hell.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#3It is good that these "water is wet" statements get written down so we can point humidity-skeptical people to them from time to time.
The deeper problem is the sad state of affairs of distributed computing for the end user:
* Application instances expect to be the only ones modifying the files that underlie the document being edited. Most of them simply bail out when the files get modified by another application.
* The default is "one device = one (local) filesystem" which is the exact opposite to what everyone needs: "one person = one (distributed) filesystem."
* The case for local-only filesystems only addresses corner cases, or deficient distributed file systems that fail to uphold basic security constraints (such as "my data is only in my devices" or "no SPOF" for my data).
* Whatever gets pushed to the cloud becomes strongly dependent on devices and vendors. Users end up handcuffed to a specific hardware (iCloud) or software (Android) if they want to have any chance of interacting with their own documents from their own devices.
* What we need is not cloud desktops, or cloud storage. We need local desktops with a decent distributed filesystem, and vendor agnostic access to that filesystem from all our devices.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#4As a software dev, I like using whatever as a local env but SSH'ing into something more powerful to perform any heavy lifting. There's also tools like VSCode Remote that make it almost like developing locally. That said, the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro. These things are hell.
> the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro
Do you mean computationally taxing or mentally taxing?
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#5As a software dev, I like using whatever as a local env but SSH'ing into something more powerful to perform any heavy lifting. There's also tools like VSCode Remote that make it almost like developing locally. That said, the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro. These things are hell.
That is not what the article is talking about:
> I'm also going to restrict this discussion to the case of "We run a full graphical environment on the VM, and stream that to the laptop" - an approach that only offers SSH access is much more manageable, but also significantly more restricted in certain ways. With those details mentioned, let's begin.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#6A combination of AWS Workspaces and Appstream solutions worked fine for us, with a few hundred developers and data scientists, spread all over the world, as FTEs (for the first category of products) and contractors on various continents (for the latter), including some M&As we conducted and continue to undergo, which require(d) very short time to bringing new teams up to speed.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#7As a software dev, I like using whatever as a local env but SSH'ing into something more powerful to perform any heavy lifting. There's also tools like VSCode Remote that make it almost like developing locally. That said, the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro. These things are hell.
That is not what the article is talking about: > I'm also going to restrict this discussion to the case of "We run a full graphical environment on the VM, and stream that to the laptop" - an approach that only offers SSH access is much more manageable, but also significantly more restricted in certain ways. With those details mentioned, let's begin.
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Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#8It is good that these "water is wet" statements get written down so we can point humidity-skeptical people to them from time to time. The deeper problem is the sad state of affairs of distributed computing for the end user : * Application instances expect to be the only ones modifying the files that underlie the document being edited. Most of them simply bail out when the files get modified by another application. *…
> * What we need is not cloud desktops, or cloud storage. We need local desktops with a decent distributed filesystem, and vendor agnostic access to that filesystem from all our devices.
While I agree, this by itself doesn't solve the problem when you depend on such a FS for your work in a way that when you lose network connectivity, you can no longer work.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#9As a software dev, I like using whatever as a local env but SSH'ing into something more powerful to perform any heavy lifting. There's also tools like VSCode Remote that make it almost like developing locally. That said, the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro. These things are hell.
> the most taxing tools that I use regularly are things like video conferencing and "collaboration" tools like Miro Do you mean computationally taxing or mentally taxing?
In my experience, both?
And combine computationally heavy result of running stuff like Miro adding to any inherent complexity of collaboration task... Ehhh
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#10I've done this for a long while, and I always come back to the only two viable competitors in the space (that don't require enterprise licensing).
Nomachine and ThinLinc.
Everything else is fine for the occasional remote desktop administration, but they all have a combination of bad video quality, no audio, no keyboard shortcut capture or bad scaling options.