Re: Xpra

>You do not need Xpra for that: normal X11 over TCP on the network of the
>VM is enough.

>Xpra would bring you the ability to detach apps on a per-VM basis, from
>the real display, but compared to just hiding the windows it only saves
>a small handful of resources on the display, and costs more resources on
>the VM themselves.

>On the other hand, Xpra is nowhere as transparent as plain X11, it is
>added on top of a virtual X11 server and optimised for low-bandwidth and
>high-latency and uses bitmaps and video codecs to speed up the display.
>On something high-bandwidth low-latency like between host and VM, you
>just get the drawbacks of having a virtual X11 server sending bitmaps of

>its windows.

I didn't understand well what you meant.

On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 4:33 PM Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:

Mario Marietto (HE12025-04-25):
> Exactly. A whole new Linux distro can be made following your approach. The
> distro that I have had in mind since ages. A Linux distro that acts as a
> main box with a lot of little boxes inside. Each one is a vm with a
> different OS (FreeBSD,NetBSD,OpenBSD and so on). And Xpra installed on each
> virtual machine / distro. And in the main distro,using Xpra you can call
> all the different commands and applications that belong to each distro.
> Something like this :

You do not need Xpra for that: normal X11 over TCP on the network of the
VM is enough.

Xpra would bring you the ability to detach apps on a per-VM basis, from
the real display, but compared to just hiding the windows it only saves
a small handful of resources on the display, and costs more resources on
the VM themselves.

On the other hand, Xpra is nowhere as transparent as plain X11, it is
added on top of a virtual X11 server and optimised for low-bandwidth and
high-latency and uses bitmaps and video codecs to speed up the display.
On something high-bandwidth low-latency like between host and VM, you
just get the drawbacks of having a virtual X11 server sending bitmaps of
its windows.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George