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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

#411

Post by asdff »

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…

env management is pretty easy considering tools like conda are out there, that will carry you pretty far especially in terms of education. you could create a conda env specific for your class and just email the yaml. its also easy to write a script that will install miniconda and build these needed environments

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

#412

Post by tenebrisalietum »

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…

A small Windows utility called caffeine generates fake keypresses (F15 which is not on most keyboards) and/or moves the mouse slightly, which prevents screen lock from kicking in.

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

#413

Post by asdff »

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 are many ways to approach this sort of thing. For example I work similarly, all code running on a powerful slurm-managed cluster that i can access using anything with ssh, but I just use stuff like tmux and cli editors that are already installed on the server rather than use a gui based editor. we have an lmod system with prebuilt packages of a lot of software we typically use with various versions represented, and we also use environmental managers such as conda/mamba and workflow control tools which are straightforward to use. Seems simple enough imo.

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

#414

Post by bombcar »

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…

Meanwhile I'm here completely able to build basically anything from source but for some reason unable to understand docker at all.

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

#415

Post by WWLink »

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…

> No more do students have to set up their own envs.

That straight up sounds dystopian though. Speaking as someone who makes software for Linux machines, I'd really hate to hire someone that doesn't know how to play around with the OS side of things.

Handing someone a pre-built dev environment and playing god with them sounds like a great way to get stupid programmers who can't architect.

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

#416

Post by asdff »

hulitu wrote: post #352
aleksiy123 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I missed it at the end. However, he mentions the code still being present on the local env and only doing builds in the cloud. I'm more in the camp of the code living in the cloud, building in the cloud, executing in the cloud. You're editor running locally providing a view of the code. Which requires some specific tooling. As always theres a sliding scale here and people need to decide what works best for th…

> I'm more in the camp of the code living in the cloud, building in the cloud, executing in the cloud. Until you see how slow it is and you regret it.

On the 'cloud' (really our own cluster) we use at work most of the nodes have 16 cores and 128gb of memory, its a much beefier system than what is available locally.

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

#417

Post by structural »

als0 wrote: post #249
selykg wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the IT guy for a new non-profit. We aren't separated yet from the company that created us, but we're in the process of separating. I get to decide all this fun stuff. I had a very brief talk with the IT team for the larger parent company when I started and explained this stupid password rotation thing, as I came from a security background, they wanted nothing of it. Set in their ways. For the new non-profit that…

Aside from password rotation being a very questionable practice, it actually can cause productivity loss. In a big organisation like mine it can take up to 48 hours for a password change to synchronise across all the internal services. There's also the issue where some endpoint software still uses the old password behind the scenes and fails to log in too many times - causing your account to be locked. I guess you ca…

I had the joy of dealing with some endpoint software like this in an organization that had mandated password changes every 30 days. Very predictably, people set recurring "change your password" reminders for the 1st of the month and the organization lost an entire day of productivity each month as they locked themselves out of their accounts en masse. So the beginning of the month was always a panicked, all-hands-on-deck day for the help desk as people were waiting on hold for hours to get their account unlocked.

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

#418

Post by WWLink »

andrewflnr wrote: post #335
ctoth wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> wonder what happens when every dev environment is just a docker pull away They learn later, when/if they actually need it. And for those who turn out to be unwilling or unable, well, there wasn't much chance they'd have taken the same path as you, anyway. Speaking of paths, specifically path dependence, autotools and friends really are monstrosities and should rightfully be relegated to history. I hope that simpler…

In my experience, it would become "You're not allowed to deviate from the standard environment" lol.

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

#419

Post by WWLink »

Huh1337 wrote: post #403
hulitu wrote: post #344

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 So now the children have 2 entities spying on them: the school and the cloud provider.

Huh? It's not like the children aren't using Google and Microsoft services by the truckload already. Every single one has Android/iOs phone. They use Gmail and YouTube and browse the web. And the schools use it too - MS Windows, Office, Google Classroom, Drive... Practically nothing changes with a cloud desktop.

You mean a fully locked down device that allows no tinkering at all. Then they graduate to college and they're again suggested to use a fully locked down environment with no tinkering at all.

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

#420

Post by asdff »

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…

Having access to a cluster certainly beats having a local workstation imo. Why settle for 1 node when you can have many?
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