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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

#301

Post by eloisant »

zasdffaa wrote: post #273
zasdffaa wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 120ms should feel immediate. IIRC anything under 300ms feels instant.

That was a bad post. The figure of 300ms was from memory. I guess it's complex but for games shmup games ( https://www.pubnub.com/blog/how-fast-is-realtime-human-perce... ): " ...for Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG), real-time is a requirement. As online gaming matures, players flock to games with more immersive and lifelike experiences. To satisfy this demand, developers now need to produce games with very r…

> Typing should be less demanding, I'd think.

Not really, unless you're the kind of guy working in Cobol and who is used to typing with latency.

I've seen Cobol developers just ignoring the latency, keeping typing because they know what they've typed and it doesn't matter that it's slow to show up on screen.

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

#302

Post by paxys »

jdelman wrote: post #295
aleksiy123 wrote: post #259

I would have agreed until I started working at Google. Also, you should completely avoid having Remote Desktop and instead use ssh + an editor that works with remote files. At Google we have a custom fork of VSCode running in browser and builds can either be distributed or run on my Linux VM to utilize build cache. I liked it so much I started doing a similar setup for small side projects. Just boot up the Cloud Cons…

Out of curiosity, how much are you paying a month using Cloud Console that way?

Why would they be paying for it out of pocket?

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

#303

Post by gibspaulding »

aleksiy123 wrote: post #290
aleksiy123 wrote: post #259

I would have agreed until I started working at Google. Also, you should completely avoid having Remote Desktop and instead use ssh + an editor that works with remote files. At Google we have a custom fork of VSCode running in browser and builds can either be distributed or run on my Linux VM to utilize build cache. I liked it so much I started doing a similar setup for small side projects. Just boot up the Cloud Cons…

There is one more point I would like to add to the "less friction to start." This is the killer feature for education. No more do students have to set up their own envs. Figure out PYTHONPATH. No more do educators need to debug installation issues on 3 different OSes. Teachers distribute a pre setup env which they know works for what they are trying to teach. Students go straight into writing code and building things…

Teacher here. This is absolutely correct. I can't imagine teaching CS, especially at a high school level without Replit.

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

#304

Post by cardanome »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95
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.

Why not just encrypt your hard disk?

Please don't say something like you don't trust encryption. We have known cases where even state actors could not crack encrypted devices. Not to mention the remote communication you have would be easier to monitor and possibly decrypt anyway.

Sure, in theory you would need a kill switch in case some special forces come through your window while you are working on you laptop and force you to remove your hands from it but but I doubt you live such an interesting life for that to be a realistic treat model.

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

#305

Post by paxys »

systemvoltage wrote: post #279
aleksiy123 wrote: post #259

I would have agreed until I started working at Google. Also, you should completely avoid having Remote Desktop and instead use ssh + an editor that works with remote files. At Google we have a custom fork of VSCode running in browser and builds can either be distributed or run on my Linux VM to utilize build cache. I liked it so much I started doing a similar setup for small side projects. Just boot up the Cloud Cons…

> Accessible from anywhere (I use my pc, my laptop, etc. The env is always the same) This is a feature in search of a problem for me. I never wake up in the morning and go “Gee only if I can code on random computers”. It sounds super nice but then I think about it a little more and it’s just fluff.

This is a very useful feature the moment you have > 1 development machine. Complex build environments, dependencies, personal preferences all syncing seamlessly between all of them is a godsend.

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

#306

Post by aleksiy123 »

jdelman wrote: post #295
aleksiy123 wrote: post #259

I would have agreed until I started working at Google. Also, you should completely avoid having Remote Desktop and instead use ssh + an editor that works with remote files. At Google we have a custom fork of VSCode running in browser and builds can either be distributed or run on my Linux VM to utilize build cache. I liked it so much I started doing a similar setup for small side projects. Just boot up the Cloud Cons…

Out of curiosity, how much are you paying a month using Cloud Console that way?

It's free tier. But storage is limited to 5GB.

I'm pretty sure you can pay for more storage but I just haven't hit the limit yet.

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

#307

Post by paxys »

GiorgioG wrote: post #29
simfoo wrote: post #13

Nothing 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.

"Most of us" absolutely don't do that. My company has 3000+ people, and I can say with certainty that every single person works away from their desk at some point in the day. I would quit my job in an instant if I had to be tied to a desktop at a particular spot all my life.

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

#308

Post by senko »

dugmartin wrote: post #187
senko wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you do your work in VSCode you can setup the following pretty easily and it works really well (I use it to connect to my workstation in my home office when I work in a coffee shop on my laptop or the rare occasions I go into the office): 1. Install Tailscale ( https://tailscale.com/ ) on your laptop and workstation and enable the "MagicDNS" ( https://tailscale.com/kb/1081/magicdns/ ) feature. This sets up a VPN me…

Yeah, already Tailscale / WireGuard user and SSHing all around.

Didn't know VSCode had a headless mode that can be driven over the net (which is what your description sounds like), will definitely check it out, thanks.

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

#309

Post by [deleted] »

ctoth wrote: post #294
aleksiy123 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one more point I would like to add to the "less friction to start." This is the killer feature for education. No more do students have to set up their own envs. Figure out PYTHONPATH. No more do educators need to debug installation issues on 3 different OSes. Teachers distribute a pre setup env which they know works for what they are trying to teach. Students go straight into writing code and building things…

Learning to set up my environment to compile my first MUD back in 1999 was my first introduction to Autotools, ./configure, make, etc. I was motivated to solve the problem because I wanted to tinker. I'm sure someone will say I'm gatekeeping, but seriously these low-level skills have served me my entire career, and I wonder what happens when every dev environment is just a docker pull away. Who learns how to build ne…

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by babypuncher »

zasdffaa wrote: post #261
acdha wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in general but I do blame Citrix for some foot-guns. The Citrix admins at my employer have never figured out how to configure it to get keyboard latency below ~120ms (on a gigabit LAN), and the silly health meter always reports the connection as excellent. This is mostly on them - in classic enterprise IT thinking, if it’s not down your job is done - but I’m somewhat disappointed that it’s even possible to co…

A 120ms should feel immediate. IIRC anything under 300ms feels instant.

This is just flat out wrong. Any seasoned gamer can feel the difference between a few tens of milliseconds.

300ms would render most video games unplayable.

I see this claim a lot and it's making me want to build a website that gives you some common interactions (moving a mouse cursor, pressing a button) with adjustable latency so people can see just how big of an impact seemingly small amounts of lag have on how responsive something feels.

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