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Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

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Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#91

Post by Rygian »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #8
Rygian wrote: post #3

It 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.

Couple of buzzwords that address this point:

* CRDTs

* "Intelligent Edge Platforms" as Ditto [1] calls them

[1] https://www.ditto.live/

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#92

Post by ohgodplsno »

moduspol wrote: post #79
GiorgioG wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the life of me I don’t understand why folks default to laptops for development. Yes portability is great, but most of us park our behinds at the same desk everyday. If I’m going to be out of the office (away from home) I take a laptop and remote into the desktop! Even M1 macs (I have one and love it), while powerful, just can’t hold a candle to a workstation class machine.

What development are you doing where there's a notable difference between an M1 Mac and a "workstation class machine?" Is it just running a bunch of VMs? I don't doubt the tasks exist but it's got to be a list that's been dwindling for the last few years.

Android development, a clean build of our project on an M1 Pro is 15 minutes, a clean build from our build server (which is ultimately just a thick 11700K or something along those lines, so still relatively old) is 3 minutes.

Thermal throttling is a bitch.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#94

Post by pwarner »

8organicbits wrote: post #17

> Modern IDEs tend to support SSHing out to remote hosts to perform builds there, so as long as you're ok with source code being visible on laptops you can at least shift the "I need a workstation with a bunch of CPU" problem out to the cloud. I'd mention SSH port forwarding in this section. For webdev you'll want to run your server on the remote host and use the local web browser. SSH port forwarding works great for…

I get a sense this model is the future, but also don't know if anyone using it at scale? Any examples out there?

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cardanome wrote: post #14

I don't get the use case. Why would you even consider using a cloud desktop? Even a very low-spec laptop is going to run a simple graphical desktop environment like Xfce just fine. Watching a youtube video, browsing the web and even video conferencing can be handled with any new-ish laptop. And in reality, you still want a reliable laptop with decent keyboard, long battery life, good display and so on. So you won't e…

> Why would you even consider using a cloud desktop?

I've travelled to and through countries (e.g. in the Gulf, France, India) with my work laptop where I was deeply uncomfortable having those data on hand. Taking a clean machine and remoting into that one when needed removes a lot of paranoia points.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#96

Post by the8472 »

Another one is an unholy confluence of corporate compliance bullshit

Connecting to the remote machine needs to go through corporate SSO (in a browser) that then starts the native remote client. Policy requires MFA, strong, frequently changed passwords and Windows Hello on the laptop. Policy also requires screen lock after 5 minutes. For some reason policy also requires disabling copy-paste to remote machines.

The end result is that the remote session gets locked out every 5 minutes when you do something in the laptop's browser instead. To log back in one either has to enter a long, complicated password (can't paste it from the password manager!) or use an mfa code. Hardware tokens don't work either due to unreliable USB forwarding.

Having to jump through those hoops once or twice a day would be tolerable, dozens of times is grating.

I assume the policies are written for all the worst-case scenarios where people remote in from private, shared devices or use a laptop in a public place. But they add a lot of unnecessary friction when a laptop is used from a lockable home office.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#97

Post by dirtyid »

cardanome wrote: post #14

I don't get the use case. Why would you even consider using a cloud desktop? Even a very low-spec laptop is going to run a simple graphical desktop environment like Xfce just fine. Watching a youtube video, browsing the web and even video conferencing can be handled with any new-ish laptop. And in reality, you still want a reliable laptop with decent keyboard, long battery life, good display and so on. So you won't e…

PIA to manage multiple systems / os that don't have functional parity. My steamlink, tablet and occasionally phone remote desktops strait onto my desktop with all the customizations I'm used to for daily tasks. It's just nice not having to adjust. Only problem (relatively new) is DRM preventing many streaming service from displaying video.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#98

Post by wongarsu »

moduspol wrote: post #79
GiorgioG wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the life of me I don’t understand why folks default to laptops for development. Yes portability is great, but most of us park our behinds at the same desk everyday. If I’m going to be out of the office (away from home) I take a laptop and remote into the desktop! Even M1 macs (I have one and love it), while powerful, just can’t hold a candle to a workstation class machine.

What development are you doing where there's a notable difference between an M1 Mac and a "workstation class machine?" Is it just running a bunch of VMs? I don't doubt the tasks exist but it's got to be a list that's been dwindling for the last few years.

I think anyone who wants a large amount of RAM or who works on projects in compiled languages will easily notice the difference.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#99

Post by viraptor »

Huh1337 wrote: post #47
viraptor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just synchronise things without knowing the file formats. You can't do a seamless distributed FS which allows offline changes. Or more precisely, you can, but by choosing the most fresh file and people have lost work that way. There's a few "dropbox ate my files" stories out there.

CRDTs? Perhaps the idea of plain text/binary files is a little outdated too.

CRDT is extremely format-specific. File systems don't operate at that level. And that's before we even decide if the merged edits is what you actually want.
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