On Sun, Mar 06, 2016 at 08:33:46PM +0000, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> Teodoro Santoni <asbrasbra@???> writes:
> > 2016-03-06 18:23 GMT+01:00, Steve Litt <slitt@???>:
> >> What did they replace X11 forwarding with? (I shudder to ask)
> >
> > Nothing afaik.
> > Some people are enabling VNC for wayland compositors though.
> > They are very akin technologies.
>
> Not at all, actually. VNC based on keeping two bitmapped displays in
> sync by sending by sending 'bitmap updates' from the remote machine to
> 'the local display'. Even in a LAN environment (disclaimer: Haven't used
> it since 2004) this is a clunky mechanism which sucks badly.

Is that what I get with ssh -X? I've noticed it's sometimes quite klunky.
The doc says something about setting up a dummy X server that relays
everything to the real X server. As for the straight X protocol? Soe
years ago it seems to have become so paranoid I can't get it to talk to
a server that isn't on the same machine as the client.

And I've found the odd piece of software here and there that won't talk
over ssh -X.

> OTOH, X
> uses a higher-level protocol where clients send "drawing commands" to an
> X server which executes them on their behalf. It's just that this is one
> of these "obsolete technologies" (2D graphics? Nobody uses that!)
> so-called 'modern desktop applications' don't use: These do all their
> rendering on the client (at least reportedly) and then send bitmaps to
> the X server. As this still sucks badly, "network transparency" is
> essentially useless for wayland as "like VNC" is the best it will ever
> become.
>
> OTOH, I'm almost exclusively using applications which do use the
> "obsolete 2D graphic features" (fvwm, 'lucid emacs', xterm) and this
> means I can (and actually did for a long time) do stuff like "work from
> home at the end of an ADSL link, using my local computer as better 'X
> terminal' to run graphic applications on another computer located in an
> office 30 miles away from me".

That might even work if I could manage to clear the privilege barriers
on my own machines.

And remember the days when the window manager could run on yet another
machine?

-- hendrik