[X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP

[Walid MOGHRABI]

Hi Stefan,

I went through the same problems and same tests comparing both X2Go to XRDP ... If it is of any help, here are my thinking :

XRDP is a good solution, it is efficient and works really well but it has some drawbacks too.
First, it lacks all the middleware we find with X2Go, especially the broker, the session management, the TCE settings, ...
It is mostly a good and efficient component for remote access but this is raw and even if it is not that complicated to setup, in a complex situation where you need brokerage, session management, AD integration, ... it makes things a bit more complicated.

On the performances side, things are not that simple ...
XRDP seem to offer a good GLX support with a fast software renderer so even h/w accelerated stuff just work, with limitations due to the remote thing but at least, it works, even h/w accelerated desktops such as Gnome 3, Unity, KDE, ... 
Not very fast but it works.
With less demanding desktops such as MATE or XFCE, it really flies and there a re a few bugs which even disappear such as these :

https://github.com/ArcticaProject/nx-libs/issues/337
https://github.com/ArcticaProject/nx-libs/issues/336
https://github.com/ArcticaProject/nx-libs/issues/301

Even applications that are quite slow under X2Go (presently, webkit based applications such as Chrome/Chromium and even Firefox without XRender=True)

But playing with some settings, you can get a very usable and snappy solution with all the advantages of X2Go that I already cited.
Here is my use case :

I use X2Go for a complete TCE setup (thin clients for my company) with about 150 users connecting a farm for 32 servers.
Each server is installed with a custom Ubuntu 16.04 server + lightweight MATE desktop.
Each TCE boot straights from the network loading a minimalistic Ubuntu 16.04 server + X2Go as display manager conencting to a X2Go session broker.
Each session is a full screen desktop with 1920x1080 resolution on a 100MB local LAN network.

I configured the session with these settings :

    * Pack method : 64k-jpeg
    * Speed : LAN
    * Resolution : Fullscreen 1920x1080
    * Sound : On with Pulseaudio

With these settings in this setup, even Chromium is usable, it is still beyond other applications such as LibreOffice, Gimp, the whole desktop itself and many more applications but fast enough for my users to work comfortably.

To me, X2Go is a real gain on the overall but I do agree that XRDP is faster on many points but X2Go is just more usable and complete.
And last but not least, there is active development by the Arctica team on the NX-Libs (what is the X2Go equivalent of XRDP in fact) and a lot of good things are coming in a near future, I just hope "near" is not too far from now.

Regards,
Walid Moghrabi

TRAVAUX.COM
BAT I - PARC CEZANNE 2 290 AVENUE GALILEE - CS 80403
13591 AIX EN PROVENCE CEDEX 3

----- Mail original ----- 

De: "Stefan Seidel" <sseidel at vub.de> 
À: x2go-user at lists.x2go.org 
Envoyé: Mardi 13 Juin 2017 12:27:28 
Objet: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP 


Hi, 

I have been trying to get X2Go to a usable state for a long time. Some may remember that I posted about slow performance even with Gigabit networking, mostly web browser usage was problematic. 

After having spent very much time trying to optimise X2Go to make it perform acceptably, I gave up. 

I then found and tried XRDP, and all my problems are solved. Although XRDP (with xorgxrdp drivers) uses more bandwith than X2Go, it is much more usable in almost all situations. Even ADSL links work ok, but with Gigabit connectivity it really flies (including video). 

I don't like to advertise for other "products", but this has made such a difference that I could not withhold this information from those who are not satisfied with X2Go. 

Maybe as a means of making X2Go better, I would encourage X2Go developers to install XRDP on a test server and test and compare its performance to X2Go. I would be surprised if X2Go would perform better - in fact I was surprised how much better XRDP was. Maybe there are things that can be done in X2Go to make it better by looking at how XRDP does things. 

I really wanted X2Go to work, but somehow it didn't work for me. 
I wish you all the best for improving the project in the future! 

Stefan 
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