Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11 • Hacker News Board

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#61

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

gdevenyi wrote: post #33

The SSH support in the GUI application isnt very good which precludes me recommending it to my users sadly.

I find it really annoying that it seems to default to paramiko for ssh support. I already have all of my ssh setup via openssh (e.g. jumphosts, identity files, connection multiplexing), and I have to pass "--ssh=ssh" to get any of that to work.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#62

Post by bogwog » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #17

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #15

I tried Xpra for remote applications some four to five years ago when I migrated from Windows to Linux and needed a Remote Desktop (type) alternative. I stuck with it for a while in advance of numerous other options, until I found NoMachine - which doesn't do remote applications but does do full remote desktop and has the closest 'feel' to being local-machine than anything other than Windows Remote Desktop. I (ironic…

For remote desktop use cases, I’ve found RustDesk to be pretty good, especially if you can self host the relay: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk I especially enjoyed that I can use AV1 for the encoding (better quality even at lower bitrates), being able to switch resolutions easily and also the response times being pretty quick.

I prefer MeshCentral. Not only does it work better, it has way more features. For example, you can browse the remote system's files and use a terminal without having to stream the graphical environment. It also has some Intel ME integration which I haven't really looked into.

RustDesk is easier to get started with though, especially if you're coming from TeamViewer. However I've always been a little wary of RustDesk. The dev is (was? Haven't kept up) anonymous and seems to be some Chinese company. Even ignoring the China ties, I wouldn't trust an anonymous dev with sensitive software like this.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#63

Post by SSLy » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

necrotic_comp wrote: post #9

blahgeek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the existence of Wayland means X11 is deprecated. Lots of people (including myself) would prefer the perfectly working X11 than the feature-incomplete backward-incompatible "modern" wayland

I haven't yet seen any compelling reason to move off of X11. It's been years since I've checked - what's the current state of the art ?

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope is the one actually competent wayland WM.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#64

Post by FranGro78 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:36 PM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #15

I tried Xpra for remote applications some four to five years ago when I migrated from Windows to Linux and needed a Remote Desktop (type) alternative. I stuck with it for a while in advance of numerous other options, until I found NoMachine - which doesn't do remote applications but does do full remote desktop and has the closest 'feel' to being local-machine than anything other than Windows Remote Desktop. I (ironic…

Perhaps it would make you feel a little better to learn that RDP was created from Citrix’s ICA protocol during some cross licensing between the two companies.

I worked on using hardware acceleration to replace parts of the ICA client application’s raster functionality for “thin client” devices a lifetime ago.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#65

Post by simcop2387 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:37 PM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #14

4ad wrote: post #8

Last I checked this didn't support HiDPI, a technology invented over 10 years ago.

I have not used Xpra, so I do not know if it has any problems with this, but a priori I do not see why an application like Xpra would need to be aware about the screen resolution. That should be handled by the X clients and servers. I have used only 4k monitors for more than 10 years in Linux and the only applications with which I frequently had problems were various programs written in Java by morons, which were usu…

The way Xpra works is that it's both a server and client in it's own right. So it needs to be aware for the final client involved to be able to learn about it from the other side of the chain, so it does need to be aware of it in order for applications to know that they need to adjust themselves. What this results in is that the client you're running through Xpra will just assume it's a normal 96 DPI display from yesteryear usually. I think you can do some stuff to tell Xpra that it should be a higher DPI but that'll also make it so that the application will be gigantic on a low dpi display, something that's pretty typical for X11 since it doesn't properly support mixed DPI environments (i.e. a laptop screen that's high dpi and an external monitor that is low dpi).

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#66

Post by JeremyNT » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:38 PM UTC

If you're only working on Linux, you almost surely want waypipe [0] instead of xpra. If you need support for other platforms, though, xpra is still a pretty good solution.

[0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#67

Post by llmblockchain » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:41 PM UTC

I am running linux machines and I have one headless machine. I need to keep a browser running in that machine and occasionally check on it (see what it's doing, and possibly fix things in the browser). Would Xpra let me do that from a remote machine?

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#68

Post by nathanasmith » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #55

rwmj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PulseAudio has already been abandoned, the new thing is Pipewire. The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux and then with OSS 4 they made it proprietary, which killed it off entirely as far as Linux users are concerned. (FreeBSD cloned it instead.)

Oh yeah. I should have noticed that because on the Debian machine I set up for my daughter, audio suddenly broke, and it started working again when I removed pipewire. No joke, if you remove the new thing stuff magically starts working again.

I had to restart Pipewire just this morning when audio randomly stopped working. It's funny as this is the first time it happened then an hour later I'm reading in this thread about Pipewire acting funny on other people's computers.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#69

Post by metadat » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

PhilipRoman wrote: post #24

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #15

I tried Xpra for remote applications some four to five years ago when I migrated from Windows to Linux and needed a Remote Desktop (type) alternative. I stuck with it for a while in advance of numerous other options, until I found NoMachine - which doesn't do remote applications but does do full remote desktop and has the closest 'feel' to being local-machine than anything other than Windows Remote Desktop. I (ironic…

xrdp + rdesktop is my current daily driver for this

Xrdp is really good.

I'm amazed by the quantity of different Linux remote desktop solutions covered in this thread. Is the fragmentation a good sign of a healthy ecosystem?

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#70

Post by p_l » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #63

necrotic_comp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't yet seen any compelling reason to move off of X11. It's been years since I've checked - what's the current state of the art ?

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope is the one actually competent wayland WM.

Noticeably it doesn't export Wayland to applications running underneath unless you enable an experimental flag, and half the reason for its existence is that it can be entirely bypassed by related Vulkan layer extension.