On 02/02/2011 12:04 PM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
On Wed, 2011-02-02 at 10:02 +0100, Erik Auerswald wrote: <snip>
The problem with NoMachine going closed source is that the people updating, improving and fixing (the free) NX will stop doing so (or have already done that). NX is the enabler for X2Go, but I don't see X2Go having the manpower to tackle the additional task of developing resp. maintaining NX themselves.
Erik
This concerns us quite a bit. On the other hand, it plays to one of X2Go's strengths. Heinz and Alex have always maintained that it is not a remote protocol solution like NoMachine but a complete Terminal Server Project. Some have criticized it for just being a bunch of wrappers but I see that as its saving grace here. I'd imagine there is no reason why something else besides NX could not be slotted into the wrappers in place of NX -- perhaps something that handled video and other large screen updates better.
Of course, the big question is what. HP has done some very interesting work with adaptive protocols, i.e., they adapt their compression algorithms to the needs of the video transfer. If I understand them correctly, they handle the streaming video problem not by spooling the file to the physical desktop and playing it locally like Citrix does but by adapting the algorithms used for transmitting the video. I do not believe they have open sourced the code.
Almost two years ago, Heinz forwarded me a link to a University project that was investigating more video friendly remote video protocols.
So, I don't have an answer but I think we can keep our eyes open for something besides NX. Just an ignorant thought - John
John, yes I've also been keeping my eye on some things like this.
There are a number of efforts cropping up that are trying to take advantage of GPU hardware on the client.
Wayland by Ubuntu is one that comes to mind.
The idea is to just send the screen "damage" events down to the client and let the client GPU hardware handle it.
Regards, Gerry