2011/5/4 John Williams <jwilliams4200@gmail.com>:
2011/5/3 Milan Knížek <knizek.confy@volny.cz>:
Gnome 3 requires a hw support from the video card. Before the upgrade, have you successfully used some compositing window manager through x2go (compiz, metacity with compositing enabled)? I doubt so...
Up until now, I have not heard any news that Gnome 3 would provide a fallback, which would be visually similar to the "normal" Gnome 3. (Canonical has such a plan for its Unity - to be released in autumn 2011.)
Right. It isn't possible to use accelerated graphics with NX -- at least for the time being. I'd be more than a little surprised if that was to change in the near future. Another problem with these new shells is the growing number of unnecessary animations, even when they don't require acceleration. They still kill the performance for NX-based thin clients. Unity 2D has that problem as well. You need to scroll the launcher, for instance, and since this doesn't look the same every time, NX doesn't really optimize it that much. Unity 2D is available in the Ubuntu repositories already btw, and they've provided an NX-based test for it, using Nomachines Web Companion: http://www.edubuntu.org/weblive (Remember to check Ubuntu 11.04 using Unity 2D.)
This is by the way the reason, why I am in a search for a GNOME replacement...
Well, Gnome is more than a shell. It's quite possible to use Xfce4-panel with the rest of Gnome, or LXPanel if you want to. Gnome-panel will also be available for a long time, so there's no need to rush into radical changes.
I have never tried KDE before, but I tried it after having this problem. I could not stand it, and it had some compatibility problems (it would not work properly with gnome-terminal -- the windows kept auto-shrinking themselves).
I've run KDE4 using X2go and it's seemed to work just fine. I don't really like KDE4 though, so I haven't stuck with it, but it should be a viable option.
Then I tried LXDE, and that works great with x2go and all my usual programs. I also like the feel of it, and it seems fast (KDE felt slow to me). So it looks like I am switching to LXDE.
Yes, LXDE is a brilliant environment and perfectly suited for terminal servers. It really is very fast; on my laptop it's ready for use in less than two seconds while all the others take ten or more. The differences will probably be smaller on a terminal server though. You should also have a look at Xfce, which is more like Gnome 2, but slightly less demanding. I really like both of them.
If you're using Ubuntu, you might be interested to know that the appindicators (the replacement for notification area and stuff in gnome-panel and Unity) are supposed to be available for both LXDE and Xfce as well. I really like that little piece of software and it makes the panels in both DEs more useful, I think. Appindicators are not included in LXPanel or Xfce4-panel by default for performance reasons, and I haven't tried them in those panels myself, but I've been told enabling them doesn't require magic.
Since you said you're looking for a replacement for Gnome, I want to add something: Xfce4-panel is able to run Gnome-panel applets, which may be very useful. I do think Xfce4 is a natural replacement if you want to stick with the Gnome2 experience while at the same time using software that's actively developed, more lightweight and more suitable for terminal servers. But LXDE is great too; I really love both of them. :)
I hope this is of use to you, and please write about your experiences.
Jo-Erlend Schinstad