Michael wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] remote X vrs VNC' on Mon, Jan 24 at 06:59:
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Hi All,
I've been using remote-X over dial-up connections (ISDN) quite easily at work. This wasn't just X, but a compressed version of it. On both ends, software (go-global) was installed from Graphon (Solaris/HP-UX and PC).
And as far as i know, there is still something like LBX (Low-Bandwith-X), an extension to X.
Hallo Hans,
I know LBX (lbxproxy), and I tested it, as well as ssh with compression an X11 redirection (ssh -CX), but over my DSL line both were unusable slow with "modern" X clients like mozilla. For simple clients (xterm and the like) they seemed ok to me.
You either have unacceptably high standards for "usability", a high-latency connection to the X server in question, or both. I've used X apps over a good dial-up line, tunneled over compressed SSH - including Mozilla - with acceptable results. This is with a 200MHz machine or so on both ends of the link. If you want to seem like you're sitting in front of the machine, VNC isn't gonna do it either - you need a really long monitor cable and a keyboard extension cable. Things with large pop-up windows, etc, do tend to get a little slower over a tunneled connection, and ssh's compression isn't really optimized for anything but generic data - so you should get better performance out of something dedicated like LBX. Either way, though, remote control options for other systems suck as much or more. Using TightVNC with the jpeg compression options seems to be about the best bet, since you can trade off some quality for a bit of speed (and since you can bump the color depth down on slow links). --Danny, who uses VNC a lot now, largely because of the state preservation ability (start working at home, close the window, open it back up at work where it's just as I left it) and because the -via argument now makes the ssh tunnel setup a little quicker.