Privacy is also terrible in cloud desktops (and cloud apps) but many (most?) developers do not see it as a concern. It's too late to push for privacy in cloud software - especially when it's developers who are the strongest advocates for user-tracking in cloud desktops.
Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
101–110 of 479 posts
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#102Earlier 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.
I assume that "decent" in the comment meant to address that?
It would have to be magical not just decent. This is not solvable on the level of the file system. You can't add a blue line to an image on one system and a red line on another system and expect the filesystem to somehow figure out how to handle that on its own. The best you can count on is the conflict being flagged with both versions exposed.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#103Nothing beats working directly on a fast but quiet workstation sitting next to my table. At least for me, the productivity gains associated with quicker builds, IDE resyncs (CLion, looking at you) or just being able to have email, chat, calendar and an active video conference running without making the system crawl to a halt or long latency spikes are huge. 3-4k for a machine that will likely last 2-3 years is nothin…
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.
I'd love to do that, but my laptop's and workstation's state inevitably get out of sync leading up to "wait why doesn't this work ... spend a couple of minutes .. ah yes I did X on the other device".
(Before someone suggest "use docker": then I'd need a more powerful workstation and laptop :-)
And VNCing into my workstation from the laptop has all the drawbacks that Matthew described in the article.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#104Whoa, I thought they are absolutely pointless. Are they even worse?
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#105I've had this in the last few jobs. One reason for it is that to move desks in NYC requires a union employee to move the computer which ends up costing a few thousand dollars. With terminals and a cloud PC you avoid this.
As a European, I find this befuddling. A union employee of whom?
Doesn't matter who's paying them as long as they're union. There are certain things you just can't yourself.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#106Cloud desktops are not a cure-all, but they do have their uses. I have "cloud" desktops hosted in my home (on a NUC server) and also on cheap VPS instances, depending on my particular needs, whether that be an isolated environment for dangerous work, or just having a portable desktop that I can connect to from whatever device I have at hand, continuing from where I last left off.
GPU-intensive desktops are pretty much a no-go, but Mate desktop works beautifully and does what a desktop should: Manage my environment and get the hell out of my way.
Browsing on the remote desktop is anything but smooth, but it's good enough for development. I'm not going to stream video on it, though.
There's a tiny bit of keystroke latency, but not enough to matter IMO. I'm using Chrome remote desktop so YMMV. Running Steam on a cloud desktop is possible, but it's an exercise in madness.
I do it all using LXD to keep things relatively distro agnostic. I've posted the Python script I use here: https://github.com/kstenerud/lxc-launch
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#107The later versions of RDP is miles ahead of any other remote desktop protocol in my experience. I used to use it for gaming years ago (from Windows machine to Mac) - it really isn't that bad if latency and bandwidth is acceptable.
As others say, it is very hard sometimes to detect what is local and what isn't with RDP. Everything seems to just work, even using the Mac client.
Compare this with everything else I've used and it's a real janky JPEG compression mess.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#108This is where I wish Plan 9 had caught on. It lets you run remote graphical apps more seamlessly than any remote desktop I know of today.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like syncthing. Dunno about phones and tablets, but I have that functionality among my computers.
I have no affiliation but want to second this. If you want to keep your filesystem in sync across many devices Syncthing fully enables this. It is a use case where you would expect a payed service would be easier or more reliable but with Syncthing it is the exact opposite. Just install it on your devices and select the folders you want to keep in sync ... done. I had never had any problems with it something I cannot…
My filesystem consists of [checks du -h . | tail -1] 189 GB.
I don't think Syncthing (which I love) can cram 189 GB on my 64 GB phone.
Yet I expect to have access to my filesystem from my phone.
Synthing is a nice "pump-hose system" between reservoirs of data. What I was arguing above is to stop having separate reservoirs of data to begin with.
Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like syncthing. Dunno about phones and tablets, but I have that functionality among my computers.
I use syncthing. It's awesome for computers. Coming from Dropbox, then Nextcloud, I find it solves all my needs much, much better, at least on well-supported platforms. I love how I can decide what to sync where, and even create my own topology of sync-devices if I like. That may sound like crazy complex stuff and over-engineering and what not, but it was a solution I landed on organically, just through normal use. T…
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