on Wed, May 28, 2003 at 07:08:47PM -0700, Paul Johnson (baloo@ursine.dyndns.org) wrote:
> For months now, while I'm at work, I've been running a couple programs
> in SSH, displaying on my computer at work. Now I'm curious if I can
> do something similar to get a KDM login on my home box.
>
> Using knoppix at work, sid at home.
Likely. But I'd ask why.
First: X is a network-transparent system, meaning you can run an
application, or your entire session, over the net.
That said, there are some good reasons for keeping at least bits of your
X session local. In particular, the window manager. Mostly for
performance reasons.
Even over a high speed network, you're going to have both latency and
bandwidth effects. And even if your _net_ latency is low, and bandwidth
is high, periodic network "burps", etc., can gum up the works.
My recommendation: run a locally managed X session. Run the remote
apps you must run via an ssh tunnel, launching them from a remote shell
with an appropriate DISPLAY value.
If you *must* run a remotely managed session, look into ssh compression
and lbxproxy (the low-bandwidth X proxy). They'll help somewhat.
And note that there are environments which translate better to remote X
than others. Particularly twm, fvwm, blackbox, fluxbox, and xfce. My
own preference, WindowMaker, generates a heck of a lot of network
traffic (mostly dock apps). It's a pig over DSL, and, well, when I
tried it over a 56K dialup, it worked....after about 15 minutes
startup....
I'd strongly discourage use of GNOME or KDE over a remote connection.
VNC will do you better here.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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