[GTALUG] X servers [was Re: Has the graphics-card world gone mad?]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Anthony de Boer via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| Back in the day it used to be customary to run X applications on the big
| grunty server in the machine room, talking over the network to a
| relatively underpowered desktop X Terminal that knew little more than how
| to paint stuff on the screen, and that's still a possible fallback today,
| with the big PC using the RPi as a terminal.

It seems that network transparent graphics is no longer a thing.

Scott Sullivan has explained this in our last meeting.  Here's what I 
absorbed (Scott may consider this a distortion).

- performance is crap because the X protocol doesn't express things in a 
  way that engages the capabilities of modern GPUs

- security was poor.  (Surely that could have been fixed.)

- network bandwidth just doesn't match CPU to GPU bandwidth

- latencies annoy folks.  TCP/IP Networking makes no latency guarantees

- the demand for network transparent desktops is very low among the folks 
  that actually develop the software

On the other hand, I like network transparent graphics.  I used it a lot.  
I laughed at Windows for not having it.  I laughed at the hackiness of VNC 
as a solution.  Well, the last laugh is on me.

Evan said that the idea that the thing on your desk was a server was 
confusing and stupid and that it was good that it is gone.  I don't agree.  
After all, the internet is a network of peers (except for those behind 
NAT).  The thing on your desk can run a server (process or service) -- 
mine runs a lot.