Re: What is VNC?
On 12-Dec-2000 Erik Steffl wrote:
> Manegold wrote:
>>
>> Alson van der Meulen wrote:
>> >
>> > > When it comes to controlling a Linux X display, I'm a little more
>> > > hazy.
>> > >
>> > > Near as I can figure, if you want to control a Linux box using
>> > > VNC, you
>> > > don't run your normal X server. Instead you run vncserver from a
>> > > non-X
>> > > environment. This starts the VNC server, but you don't see any GUI
>> > > locally. To see a local GUI, you then have to do some magic to get
>> > > your
>> > > window manager to run on the VNC server; this means that you're
>> > > not
>> > > running your accelerated X server, so you may see some speed
>> > > issues,
>> > > etc. Then from the second Linux (or Mac, or Windows) box, you run
>> > > the
>> > > VNC client and connect like in Example 2 above.
>> > >
>> > > In other words, as far as I can tell, you can't run your
>> > > super-duper
>> > > accelerated, hot-off-the-press, XFree86 server locally if you want
>> > > to
>> > > see the same desktop locally and via remote control. This is not
>> > > the
>> > > (semi-equivalent) case on Windows, but it seems to be the case on
>> > > Linux.
>> > >
>> > > I may very well misunderstand how the thing works, but this is the
>> > > conclusion I've come to after trying it three or four times over
>> > > the
>> > > past couple of years.
>> > how about xvncviewer connecting to localhost, from using the
>> > super-duper
>> > accelerated, hot-off-the-press, XFree86 server
>>
>> As I have come to understand, that will give you two desktops. One
>> under
>> the super-duper ... XFree86 Server and one via VNC (running in a
>> Window,
>> liken an application, on that said super-duper X-Server).
>>
>> Also you always get a whole Desktop (even if it's in a window), while
>> with X you get only the window for the respective application. That
>> seems to be preferrable, if you want to run 5 apps on 5 different
>> computers, since with VNC you would then have 5 Desktops on one screen
>> (one for each computer).
>>
>> >From what I learned off the web page of VNC (thanks for the link to
>> >to
>> poster!), I can't use VNC as a replacement for X (unless you get the
>> non-X vncviewer to work on the console), which would have been
>> interesting because of the footprint of X. Also it seems that VNC is
>> not
>
> well, vnc server IS X server (on unix machines).
>
> so you are not avoiding X, you are replacing one X server (+ the rest
> of X) by another one (you still need the rest of X like fonts,
> programs,
> utilities etc., whether you use the ones that come with xfree86 or some
> different one)
>
>> as efficient via Network as X, but I don't really understand why.
>> Maybe
>> someone can elaborate on that.
>
> it depends, some operation are more efficient some are less.
> basically
> vnc transfers bitmaps, X transfers 'commands' (very simplified).
>
> for example the moving of a window - if you have X window, the moving
> is done locally (by local X server), with vnc the moving is done in vnc
> server and is only displayed locally, which is of course slower (much
> more network traffic).
I guess that's why vnc hasn't replaced the X window system yet.
>
>> Making the X Desktop accessible / transferrable via VNC, as is
>> possible
>> with Windows, is not possible with UNIX/Linux.
>
> ???
>
> windows have no X desktop.
true.
>
> if you mean that you can use vnc to view windows desktop but not to
> view your 'normal' linux X desktop, that's sort of true, it's not
> possible with 'straight' vnc, but I've just seen ITP on debian-devel
> for
> a program that does that (not sure how well it works).
Yes that's what I meant. I would like to run my normal local display
system (X), but also have the option to kind of teleport my display to
some other computer that I happen to be at. When I'm done I want to be
able to return to my computer and find everything the way I left it when
I left the other computer.
vnc does that. As a display I still seem to
need X locally though, since the console vncviewer does not work with my
graphics card. I don't know if I would save much overhead as long as I'm
working with vnc locally compared with normal X. But starting X plus
windowmanager, vncserver (running another windowmanager and the apps on
that display), and also xvncviewer, is certainly quite a footprint. It
would do what I described above.
Greetings
Thorsten
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E-Mail: Manegold@uni-trier.de
Date: 12-Dec-2000
Time: 20:18:23 CET
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