X, Network transparency and ssh

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 10:53:24PM -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
> Hi all.  During the talk last night a question arose about streaming all 
> of the graphical data to a thin client via ssh.  As noted last night this 
> can be very cpu intensive.  I'm running a test at the moment that 
> demonstrates this well.
> 
> I'm currently running xawtv[1] over ssh to a thin client.  Xawtv is 
> comsuming 56% cpu constantly on an Athlon-800 (avon).  Nothing else is 
> happening on avon.  This gives an idea of how cpu intensive running even a 
> single graphically intensive app via ssh can be.
> 
> [1] tvtime refuses to start.  A bit of RTFM suggests that the tvtime 
> author doesn't support remote display with tvtime.  This is a bit of a 
> shame.  I think I'll have to bend his ear a bit :)

Xvideo, Xshm and DGA and other such features are very handy for
displaying large amounts of graphics very quickly and efficiently.
Remote displays can't do any of them, and hence it makes perfect sense
to not bother implementing any such things.  Running a compressed video
stream with something like vlc and having vlc run locally to decompress
and then display using one of the much more efficient X interfaces makes
a lot more sense for doing anything video related on a remote display.

> One solution which enables tvtime to run in a thin client environment is 
> to put tvtime _in_ the thin client and start it by sshing to the thin 
> client.

Certainly makes more sense.

Len Sorensen
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