X11 Forwarding and Windows remote desktop

Hey, First time posting here. I am running a server from my dorm and am
planning on upgrading it to Ubuntu Hardy from xp. One of the things
that I like in XP is the remote desktop feature not because it has any
particular feature, but because its relatively fast on the dorms upload
connection (800 kbps max is a pain).

I was looking into remote desktop for ubuntu and caught wind of x11
forwarding, but I couldn't find much info on how it works. I would
rather it not take screencaps like VLC does due to my low bandwidth
connection. My question is approx. how much bandwidth will having a
remote x11 session cost me in terms of bandwidth?

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:10:40 -0400, Carl Mastrangelo wrote:

> how much bandwidth will having a
> remote x11 session cost me in terms of bandwidth?

It depends upon how graphic-intensive the applications you're using are.
The more data that needs to be sent, the more bandwidth you're using.

I'm not a heavy user of graphics over X, typically. What I find is that
a slow connection is more problematic for me because of latency than
bandwidth. The delay between when I do something on my local hardware
and when the result finally appears on my screen can be annoying.

What I prefer is to avoid X forwarding at a distance where possible. For
example, instead of opening an editor on the server why not mount the
server's file system over the network and edit locally? If you're doing
X forwarding over a public network you're using SSH's X forwarding. And
in that case, you can use sshfs to mount the server's disk space on your
local machine.

But where tricks like this aren't possible, I have used X forwarding over
relatively narrow connections (like old DSL links) with only minor
frustration (but over latency, as I mentioned previously).

- Andrew

Hello,

Carl Mastrangelo wrote:

> Hey, First time posting here. I am running a server from my dorm and am
> planning on upgrading it to Ubuntu Hardy from xp. One of the things
> that I like in XP is the remote desktop feature not because it has any
> particular feature, but because its relatively fast on the dorms upload
> connection (800 kbps max is a pain).
>
> I was looking into remote desktop for ubuntu and caught wind of x11
> forwarding, but I couldn't find much info on how it works. I would
> rather it not take screencaps like VLC does due to my low bandwidth
> connection. My question is approx. how much bandwidth will having a
> remote x11 session cost me in terms of bandwidth?

To my experience, the X11 implementation in Linux is very, very slow on a
low-bandwidth link, e.g. DSL.
Its fairly easy to use, login on the remote machine with ssh -X remoteIP,
and type e.g. "xterm", and after number of seconds you will get a xterm
window (here about 50sec with 256KBit/sec uplink)


There are several other options, but it depends whether you want to transfer
the desktop of the remote machine or to start a new desktop.

If you want to look to the remote desktop, you can implement a VNC module in
the remote X-server. With "vncviewer", you can observe or manipulate the
remote desktop.
Not that fast, but it works. Alternative is the program x0vncserver, which
requires no modification of the xorg.conf file.

With "vncserver", you can start a complete new desktop on the remote machine
and use it on your client with "vncviewer". Works fine, especially if you
do not use the fancy KDE or GNOME desktop but restrict to e.g. the
simple "mwm" window manager.

A similar project is Xrdp, also based on VNC, where you can use the Windows
remote desktop client or the Linux "rdesktop", to work on the newly created
desktop on the remote machine. Comparable with the Windows 2003Server remote
desktop system (but without bothering about licenses)

Finally, there is the NoMachine NX server/client, which is highly optimized
for this kind of application. There is somehow a commercial version and an
opensource version, FreeNX. You can simply adapt the protocol to the line
speed and it's really fast due to compression and local caching of
graphics. I'm not sure whether Ubuntu offers this with their package
manager, but that's easy to find out....

Hope that this helps you and good luck!

H.Janssen
Alkmaar

Carl Mastrangelo wrote:
> Hey, First time posting here. I am running a server from my dorm and am
> planning on upgrading it to Ubuntu Hardy from xp. One of the things
> that I like in XP is the remote desktop feature not because it has any
> particular feature, but because its relatively fast on the dorms upload
> connection (800 kbps max is a pain).
>
> I was looking into remote desktop for ubuntu and caught wind of x11
> forwarding, but I couldn't find much info on how it works. I would
> rather it not take screencaps like VLC does due to my low bandwidth
> connection. My question is approx. how much bandwidth will having a
> remote x11 session cost me in terms of bandwidth?

I use X11 forwarding a lot. It has a few advantages:
- It forwards exactly what you want, and leaves out what you don't. You
will NOT get the remote "desktop", but the applications instead. They
mix in with your local applications perfectly.
- It can be tunnelled over SSH with compression. This will not give
"native" speed, but is fast enough. Using SSH is highly recommended.

You can not couple your own drives as with RDP, but with sshfs you can
just mount the remote machine or parts of it.

But if you speak of a server, why does it run X?

Best regards,
--
Willem Bogaerts

Application smith
Kratz B.V.
http://www.kratz.nl/

H.Janssen <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> If you want to look to the remote desktop, you can implement a VNC module in
> the remote X-server. With "vncviewer", you can observe or manipulate the
> remote desktop.

Easiest is to log in to the remote host and simply type "vncserver".
Observe the output to get the (VNC) screen number and then use vncviewer
on the local host to connect to it. No changes required to remote X
Windows server.

Chris

Willem Bogaerts wrote:
> Carl Mastrangelo wrote:
>> Hey, First time posting here. I am running a server from my dorm and
>> am planning on upgrading it to Ubuntu Hardy from xp. One of the
>> things that I like in XP is the remote desktop feature not because it
>> has any particular feature, but because its relatively fast on the
>> dorms upload connection (800 kbps max is a pain).
>>
>> I was looking into remote desktop for ubuntu and caught wind of x11
>> forwarding, but I couldn't find much info on how it works. I would
>> rather it not take screencaps like VLC does due to my low bandwidth
>> connection. My question is approx. how much bandwidth will having a
>> remote x11 session cost me in terms of bandwidth?
>
> I use X11 forwarding a lot. It has a few advantages:
> - It forwards exactly what you want, and leaves out what you don't. You
> will NOT get the remote "desktop", but the applications instead. They
> mix in with your local applications perfectly.
> - It can be tunnelled over SSH with compression. This will not give
> "native" speed, but is fast enough. Using SSH is highly recommended.
>
> You can not couple your own drives as with RDP, but with sshfs you can
> just mount the remote machine or parts of it.
>
> But if you speak of a server, why does it run X?
>
> Best regards,

The server I have also doubles as my media center. I say server
loosely, and only because it is on the server end of a few client/server
programs. (Im also not confident enough to rely solely on ssh to do
administrative tasks yet )

I appreciate the help!

Carl

On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:34:15 -0400, Carl wrote:

> The server I have also doubles as my media center.

Don't tell anyone, but I just happened to confirm that my home's media
center (MythTV) is accessible from my laptop even while at work. This
isn't using X forwarding, but is using SSH to forward the TCP connection
(s) used by MythTV (including both the video and MySQL).

The key is that I'm running the client on my workstation; not forwarding
over X. I'd recommend that as much as possible: don't run an application
on the server that can be run on your client while accessing server
resources. Given sshfs, even remote file access is pretty
straightforward.

But I want to emphasize: don't do remote X forwarding w/o SSH. Aside
from anything else, it's likely to be more difficult to deal with any
type of firewall between your client and server.

- Andrew

>> But if you speak of a server, why does it run X?
>
> The server I have also doubles as my media center. I say server
> loosely, and only because it is on the server end of a few client/server
> programs. (Im also not confident enough to rely solely on ssh to do
> administrative tasks yet )


OK. I have a similar situation: I have a virtual test machine at work.
It serves to test XDMCP, as well as a build server to test deployments
of web sites, etc. Anything I want to test really.

The same applies to my old laptop at home. I want to turn it into a
server (for it is quiet and small enough to be out of the away) behind
our home network (I live in a co-housing project). This gives me the
luxury of a safe place behind a firewall AND the possibility to learn
how to set up a server.

Good luck!