I love my Amazon Workspace • Hacker News Board

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#61

Post by AJRF » Wed, May 18, 2016, 3:33 PM UTC

josefdlange wrote: post #56

AJRF wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for answering! Other providers for OS X solutions are super dodgy / shutdown / involve time sharing (no imaging, you store everything into a personal Dropbox). I ask about OS X support as the requirement for OS X to run Xcode kills a lot of iOS development workshops as the cost is to high / device availability is low. Thanks again for taking the time to answer.

As a (primarily) iOS developer by trade, I feel your pain. There are colocation operations that seem to do well. They involve racks and racks of Mac minis hanging out in a datacenter somewhere -- since it's Apple hardware, it's totally acceptable within OS X licensing terms. It costs more, of course, but it might be a valuable investment to an operation that relies on a volume of machines to be available and shareabl…

Awesome thank you!

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#62

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 18, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

commandshift90 wrote: post #5

Worked on Workspaces at AWS for about a year, on the software clients in particular. I think their product has potential but for the moment is limited by some underlying technology decisions made in the interest of a quicker go-to-market. I would not be surprised if at some point soon their underlying tech became all first-party and we saw some significant improvement. There are plenty of resources throughout AWS tha…

[deleted]

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#63

Post by bpyne » Wed, May 18, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

matt_morgan wrote: post #7

I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never seems to take off either, but it's always just about to. I don't mean to criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

I've seen variations work quite well.

The first time was in a startup company. We hired a brilliant and unconventional sys admin who was somewhat reminiscent of the Gilfoyle character in "Silicon Valley". After being hired, he took a few weeks to analyze how the user groups worked. Then he disappeared into his work room for a few weeks, often working late into the night. When he finally reappeared, he had set us up so that our desktops were running apps from the Windows servers. (At the time, we used Windows 3.51 on the server with Novell ?Netware?.) I ran everything from Powerbuilder to an Oracle standalone instance to Word (or Wordperfect) from the server. When I needed additional tools, he was very cool about installing them.

The second time was at a training session at Sun Microsystems' Burlington, MA campus. My first day they handed me a key card. The card allowed me access to the building and rooms I was authorized for. I also needed it for access to workstations. I could go up to any workstation in the lobby and authorized rooms, insert it into a card reader, and instantly have my desktop appear in the state I left it in during my last session. It was a fully graphical desktop. Absolutely eye-opening experience working there for a few days. It spoiled me. I've been looking for that experience again, but haven't found it.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#64

Post by ghshephard » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:05 PM UTC

bpyne wrote: post #63

matt_morgan wrote: post #7

I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never seems to take off either, but it's always just about to. I don't mean to criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

I've seen variations work quite well. The first time was in a startup company. We hired a brilliant and unconventional sys admin who was somewhat reminiscent of the Gilfoyle character in "Silicon Valley". After being hired, he took a few weeks to analyze how the user groups worked. Then he disappeared into his work room for a few weeks, often working late into the night. When he finally reappeared, he had set us up s…

These workstations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray ?

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#65

Post by cuongt » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

Has anyone used it to play games like Minecraft? Last time I tried it didn't work.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#66

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

mkohlmyr wrote: post #40

I've been experimenting with something vaguely similar in the form of getting a ChromeBook and using a Nitrous VM for programming projects. I initially used (and preferred) Koding, but their shift away from solo accounts made me switch. I find it very strange that they have such a good core product that they could simply focus their efforts there and instead so much of their effort seems aimed at building an integrat…

Same here: I have experimented with nitrous.io for programming and using a Chrome based editor that works with DropBox and Google Drive for editing my leanpub book project -- all on a Chromebook. The advantage is that this setup works on any laptop or PC I sit down in front of. My only complaint about nitrous.io is that their web IDE does not work on my iPad Pro with Apple keyboard.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#67

Post by Nexxxeh » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

matt_morgan wrote: post #7

I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never seems to take off either, but it's always just about to. I don't mean to criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

I was trialing (the now defunct) Nivio back in 2007. It was so close!

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#68

Post by inthewoods » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

nutbutter wrote: post #34

Paperspace.io is pretty awesome. I've been using it for about a week now. The specs/ratio are much better over there.

Looks interesting - their demo shots show it running Windows 10, but the pricing shows Windows 7. Which does it run? Or some other OS?

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#69

Post by tw04 » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

machbio wrote: post #45

- Q: What Operating System does a WorkSpace run? - WorkSpaces provide users with the Windows 7 Experience, provided by Windows Server 2008 R2. Suits only a windows user - lets say you need a ubuntu machine; the EC2 m3.large similar to the "Performance" workspace bundle. The difference between AWS Workspace and AWS EC2 is huge ($48), while AWS Workspace will cost you $60, EC2 Machine with same configuration will cost…

Generally speaking the difference is in the client you connect to the system with. Most "VDI" solutions deal extremely well with latency/packet loss. A standard VNC connection... not so much. If you're just using a CLI it probably is a wash, but for a GUI there's a pretty big difference.

Re: I love my Amazon Workspace

#70

Post by toyg » Wed, May 18, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

matt_morgan wrote: post #7

I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never seems to take off either, but it's always just about to. I don't mean to criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

In the end, it always boils down to network reliability, latency, and loss of power/control, which is where you pay for the convenience you get from thin terminals.

The control issue in particular will come back, it's human nature. Centralised environments are locked down to a level that someone eventually finds intolerable, so they start using unsupervised local hardware. It's the natural anarchy of the human spirit... or a reaction to the stupidity of people in power :)