I used to use x2go for years, but the slow and buggy clients on macOS and Windows is the biggest drawback. Maybe one day it will get native clients and quickly become the standard.
Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw you wrote that you don't think the network is your problem, but it could be. The 1300mbps and UniFI makes me think you are using a wireless connection, and those often deliver much lower bandwidth than they should, and always have more latency than I expect. Use a wired 1Gbps connection. If it works acceptably -- which it has in every single setting I've tried -- then it is your network, though it might not be…
I should note the same thing happens while hardwired. I definitely wanted to rule it out.
Is your Ubiquiti box doing Deep Packet Inspection over your home network?
It might be frantically trying to look at every packet flying by.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#43The X96 max referenced on the same site looks pretty neat. It's a little Android TV box that appears to be ~$30 or so if you order from China, or ~$65 from Amazon. http://www.multi-seat.com/x96-max/
X96 even has an LED clock display, so you can make it blink 12:00 all the time, just like the real machines.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#44The capabilities of using a tiny client for a beefy/flexible server seem to be getting better and more mature as robust clients get cheap and bandwidth get solid. I love it. I’ve been very very slowly using AWS as my “computer” more and more. S3 is a wonderfully cheap infinite hard drive and I never have to worry about migrating scripts. And EC2 is as flexible as computing gets. And since I need to recreate everything every time I boot up, reproducibility is a must, but that’s easy when you have it from the get go.
I kinda worry about the economical likely next steps of using a thin client like a raspberry pi, like everything will become netflix/stadia and you never own the important bits.
But on the technical side it’s really great.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#45How’s the experience of working on it? I’ve been struggling to get a decent remote setup even in my home lab due to network latency. Could be because I’m trying to drive 4K. Even Win10 RDP over a 1300mbps network struggles. I wonder if I need to bite the bullet and install a real graphics card in the R720. Would love to hear more experiences of others who remote this way where you are “offloading” your compute power…
You could try solutions oriented toward gaming like Parsec or Nvidia Gamestream with Moonlight. They use hardware acceleration for video encoding and may have better latency than RDP.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#46I've been working from home for almost a year using a Pi4B running remmina. The other end is a Dell workstation running x11vnc on Ubuntu 16.04. I've only experienced occasional hiccups that I've narrowed down to things interfering with the Pi wifi reception when it's in a heatsink case.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#47How’s the experience of working on it? I’ve been struggling to get a decent remote setup even in my home lab due to network latency. Could be because I’m trying to drive 4K. Even Win10 RDP over a 1300mbps network struggles. I wonder if I need to bite the bullet and install a real graphics card in the R720. Would love to hear more experiences of others who remote this way where you are “offloading” your compute power…
If you're trying to drive 4K, I would look at the power of the thin client, and maybe try putting a graphics card there, rather than in the server.
I'd also check your choice of RDP client -- are you using the official Microsoft client or a FOSS one? I believe there are extensions to RDP that basically wrap H.264, which you'd probably want at that resolution.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#48The capabilities of using a tiny client for a beefy/flexible server seem to be getting better and more mature as robust clients get cheap and bandwidth get solid. I love it. I’ve been very very slowly using AWS as my “computer” more and more. S3 is a wonderfully cheap infinite hard drive and I never have to worry about migrating scripts. And EC2 is as flexible as computing gets. And since I need to recreate everythin…
I would love to read a blog post about your setup and your routine using this arrangement.
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#49I wonder how things like X2Go and LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) will be re-implemented when Wayland will take over.
Lol i'm getting downvoted (by Wayland fanboys I guess) but no answer so far
Re: Raspberry Pi as x2go “thin” client
#50I worked at a place that swapped out our HP pa-risc workstations for sun ray thin client machines. I actually didn’t mind as the network was pretty fast. The raspberry pi is a competent little computer and probably way more capable than those “sun” ray thin clients https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray
The SunRays were sweet. The CPU of the RPi is capable of running circles around the one found in the 'Rays, but in my experience, performance was limited by the server.
The Sun Rays had also decent sound ("CD quality"), a Cisco compatible VPN client and a smart card which allowed one to comfortably drag one's session from one Ray to another (home to office, cubicle to lab, etc.).