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Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

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Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#111

Post by progmetaldev »

jwilk wrote: post #95
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.)

> The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux Huh?

Open Sound System (OSS), rather than Open Source Software, if I'm reading you right. I only recall because I've been toying with sound software for decades, trying to get various synths and music composition applications working. Apologies if that didn't address your confusion.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#112

Post by drdaeman »

llm_trw wrote: post #108
ndiddy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland happened so badly compared to e.g. the Systemd transition or the Pipewire transition because it was developed by Xorg developers who had spent years dealing with its complexity and countless regressions caused by bugfixes breaking obscure behavior that clients depended on. As a result, they swung too far in the other direction. They came out with a minimal protocol where all the heavy lifting was done in each…

>the Systemd transition or the Pipewire transition Both of these were shit shows which only look good now to people who weren't around when they were happening.

Was Pipewire a shitshow? PulseAudio was, and it had a bunch of issues (idk about design issues - I haven't really dug into the details, but it certainly had a fair number of unpleasant bugs), but I think Pipewire transition was fairly uneventful, in a good way.

And systemd was (and still is, I guess) controversial, and there are certainly some design decisions that are questionable - but even in its early days, at the very least it worked for a number of basic scenarios and the majority of issues I've had or heard about was either in its limitations (I remember having issues with journald) or because folks didn't want to change from their preferred rc system as it already worked well for them and systemd was radically different. So, I think, it was less of a shitshow than Wayland. Or maybe I'm just forgetting things - it was a long while ago.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#113

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

JeremyNT wrote: post #66

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

Xpra's headline feature is persistent remote applications; does waypipe let you disconnect and reconnect to applications?

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#114

Post by hparadiz »

lostmsu wrote: post #47
hparadiz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KRDP Server is getting there. I was able to play Civ VI over it from my Macbook Air with decent fps.

Sadly you first have to login locally in order to use it. Or has that changed yet?

For now yes. There's only 4 people really working on it. But the most difficult part of it was the stream itself with enough performance for video and gaming at a decent fps and I can say that I was able to play civ vi over it so at this point it's the task of cleaning up the way it works.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#115

Post by kragen »

beardog wrote: post #44

I use xpra to run apps in VMS but seamlessly render them on my desktop. Allows me to have a qubes type workflow without using qubes. Probably not quite as secure, but you can disable features for untrusted servers.

i assume you mean 'in virtual machines' rather than 'in the digital operating system almost, but not quite, entirely unlike unix'?

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#116

Post by kragen »

fb03 wrote: post #87
beardog wrote: post #44

I use xpra to run apps in VMS but seamlessly render them on my desktop. Allows me to have a qubes type workflow without using qubes. Probably not quite as secure, but you can disable features for untrusted servers.

Quick question: Why would you need Xpra for this, or what are the advantages of Xpra over normal X forwarding?

x can't run untrusted applications; it trusts everything

any x application can spy on everything you're doing in other windows, send them messages, inject other windows into them, delete them, and post ui events to them. basically with very few exceptions any x application has total control over your account

xpra has other benefits (lower network bandwidth usage, being able to reconnect after network outages, being able to move an app from one display device to another) but that's not what the grandparent comment is talking about

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#117

Post by kragen »

aidenn0 wrote: post #61
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.

this sounds like something you can fix with a two-line shell script

    #!/bin/sh
    exec /usr/bin/xpra --ssh=ssh "$@"

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#118

Post by kragen »

rwmj wrote: post #51
asveikau wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux actually does this a lot. Jwz called it "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" more than 20 years ago, describing GNOME. Look at audio. PulseAudio is mostly pointless and over-engineered. Breaks a lot. You could say the same about ALSA even. FreeBSD meanwhile is still using the OSS API that Linux was on in the late 90s...

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.)

didn't pipewire preserve pulseaudio compatibility though?

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#119

Post by aidenn0 »

kragen wrote: post #117
aidenn0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this sounds like something you can fix with a two-line shell script #!/bin/sh exec /usr/bin/xpra --ssh=ssh "$@"

Since xpra takes a sub-command as the first arg it's more like:

  :
  xpra_cmd="$1"
  shift
  exec /usr/bin/xpra "$xpra_cmd" --ssh=ssh "$@"
And I don't see how that helps with using the GUI (like the comment I replied to). Also, defaults matter.

Re: Xpra: Persistent Remote Applications for X11

#120

Post by skirmish »

jacknews wrote: post #4
Filligree wrote: post #3

Okay, but X11 is deprecated. Is there a modern version?

maybe this: https://github.com/wayland-transpositor/wprs

Does it work for anybody? When I tried it a few weeks ago, it would freeze on any dialog boxes launched by an application, then would unfreeze if you managed to close the dialog without being able to see it.
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