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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

#201

Post by irusensei »

kmarc wrote: post #65
destroy-2A wrote: post #31

Try working in banking for 20 years, stuck behind at least 1 layer of citrix living in citrix inception. Latency for every keystroke, your brain starts to add latency to latency that is not there to compensate for a life lived wearing citrix latency goggles.

O.o Rarely see people like us here! :-) For me what worked is a setup where I used an Arch linux laptop, ran f5vpn in docker and used the citrix client with some tweaks through that vpn connection. It was a lot faster than my colleagues' Mac / Win client, and even better, it was automatable to start up and run everything. Ha! I did document this beautiful setup: https://github.com/kmARC/f5vpn-in-docker

My employer blocks Linux clients for whatever reason. Even if you pass through the initial checks there is some kind of system on the Remote Desktop that detects your local setup and kicks you out.

So I use a KVM Windows machine with Virtio drivers. QXL seems to be the best video solution.

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

#202

Post by prmoustache »

make3 wrote: post #151
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.

wtf do you do with your CODING workstation that a M1 computer can't do?

Warming his office.

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

#203

Post by prmoustache »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #69

With cloud gaming you can stream 4K games at 60FPS, with clarity and quality for fast moving objects. Why does remote desktop still shit itself when I move around MS Word with a few pictures? I know a tier 1 financial company that offer 100k / year developers a slow VM and from there you have to log into another VM. The VMs are dual core, 8GB. I watch in horror as each keypress takes more than a second. The amount of…

You can use the parsec client, usually dedicated to gaming, to work on a cloud desktop. It works really well.

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

#204

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

jonfw wrote: post #162
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a bit of a rant about security people and how 70% of the truly dumb decisions in our industry can be attributed to them. Your description is exactly why. Security people wedge themselves into the halls of power and then start making decisions that don't actually negatively affect them all that much. I've literally seen a CISO that insisted everyone worked in a way they themselves did not.

sadly, the job of a CISO typically isn't "make the most pragmatic decisions possible to keep our infrastructure secure and running smoothly". In many industries, it's more lke "join as many compliance programs as possible to expand the ability to capture revenue from regulated markets". The CISO didn't make the decision to enforce password rotation- the compliance programs your sales team asked for did

To your point, password rotation is considered an insecure practice because it causes people to append 1, 2, 3, etc to the same password.

But I've seen so many companies that still insist on it.

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

#205

Post by rrdharan »

irusensei wrote: post #193
destroy-2A wrote: post #31

Try working in banking for 20 years, stuck behind at least 1 layer of citrix living in citrix inception. Latency for every keystroke, your brain starts to add latency to latency that is not there to compensate for a life lived wearing citrix latency goggles.

Hah now imagine using Teams through Citrix workspace. One thing I've learned about Citrix is that its a startup company with limited resources to handle all the bugs and crusty corpocrapware layers. The client craps on my HDR setup. It install a ton of crap you don't need and it relies on crap like HDX software running on your machine that last time I've checked it didn't had ARM binaries but this tech is also unavai…

Amusingly Microsoft purchased RDP from Citrix (like 30 years ago). See version 4:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol

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

#206

Post by the8472 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #153
the8472 wrote: post #96

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…

Does your password manager have an auto-type feature?

The remote desktop app captures the shortcut that would normally trigger auto-type. If I invoke it from the password manager's GUI it does work.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #157
jiggawatts wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a "Citrix consultant" for about two decades. I'd walk into customer sites for the first time, meet people, and within minutes they would start ranting about how bad Citrix is. I suspect only dentists get this kind of feedback from customers before a procedure. Having said that, 99% of the time the problem boils down to this: The guy (and it is a guy) signing the cheques either doesn't use Citrix OR uses it from…

I recently had a bit of a rant about security people and how 70% of the truly dumb decisions in our industry can be attributed to them. Your description is exactly why. Security people wedge themselves into the halls of power and then start making decisions that don't actually negatively affect them all that much. I've literally seen a CISO that insisted everyone worked in a way they themselves did not.

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by aeyes »

yrgulation wrote: post #148
wongarsu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of silicon valley, the business world runs on Windows, no matter how cheap or expensive the machines are. Being inflexible can certainly be a red flag though.

My clients are all based in the uk and nearly all run on macos, except those at the bottom.

But the problem isn't Windows or MacOS. It's all the corporate spyware, antivirus, network interception and whatever else they come up with making the machines work like its 1995.

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

#209

Post by vsareto »

indymike wrote: post #195
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.

> I don’t understand why folks default to laptops for development. I think there's a lot of cost/benefit that comes down to: depends on what you are building. I had lunch with a VR dev last week. He needed a big machine for huge MS builds. I do a lot of web and network programming, and a $1200 LG Gram (i7/32GB, 17" screen) is way more than adequate. The important thing is that employers understand that slow computers…

>The important thing is that employers understand that slow computers cost them a lot of money when they hobble developers with them.

Sadly, that's not going to fly these days with those same employers thinking people slack off more often remotely vs. in the office.

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

#210

Post by blevin »

irusensei wrote: post #193
destroy-2A wrote: post #31

Try working in banking for 20 years, stuck behind at least 1 layer of citrix living in citrix inception. Latency for every keystroke, your brain starts to add latency to latency that is not there to compensate for a life lived wearing citrix latency goggles.

Hah now imagine using Teams through Citrix workspace. One thing I've learned about Citrix is that its a startup company with limited resources to handle all the bugs and crusty corpocrapware layers. The client craps on my HDR setup. It install a ton of crap you don't need and it relies on crap like HDX software running on your machine that last time I've checked it didn't had ARM binaries but this tech is also unavai…

> One thing I've learned about Citrix is that its a startup company

Founded 1989, 2021 revenue over $3B

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