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
Hello Stefan,
Thank you very much for the information. I'm also choosing among remote access technologies now, although I do not observe problems you describe with X2Go.
Did you try to simply use X protocol? Does XRDP provide any benefits?
Also, in your comparisons did you use SSH tunnelling, plain TCP, or TCP+UDP?
--
With Best Regards, Marat Khalili
On 13/06/17 13:27, Stefan Seidel wrote:
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 things that can be done in X2Go to make it better by looking at how
- in fact I was surprised how much better XRDP was. Maybe there are
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
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
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@vub.de> À: x2go-user@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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Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
I agree with Walid about XRDP being super fast and snappy with low resource intensive desktops. It worked really well for me with a XFCE set up on one project I was working on. However both XRDP and X2GO could not provide a good visualization for my current project that has thin clients pulling down LTSP images. The LTSP desktop images are all low resource but we use them as a jumping point to connect to Red Hat VMs. The only connection method I found that could support a decent desktop experience for our users as with X11VNC + XDMCP. I went through xrdp/x2go/NX and even Horizon View and all had either poor performance or in the case of Horizon View were just not really meant for Linux yet (the support is pretty awful).
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Daniel Lindgren <bd.dali@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
Brian, I don't really understand your point about your thin clients, LTSP images and remote connection to RedHat VMs.
From what I can tell, the lower spec thin clients we have are older Wyse celeron based with 1Gb of RAM. My thin client boot from LAN with the TCE-NG setup and simply download a 230MB OS image and run from it diskless. They start the X2Go client in display manager mode and eat about 512MB RAM, OS image included (running apps goes for about 200MB). Since it's direct X2Go connection, there is no local stuff, only remote and these low specs Thin Clients perform as good as the higher specs PCs we converted to Thin Clients and which are 4GB, Core i3/i5 and more ...
Regards, Walid Moghrabi
TRAVAUX.COM BAT I - PARC CEZANNE 2 290 AVENUE GALILEE - CS 80403 13591 AIX EN PROVENCE CEDEX 3
----- Mail original -----
De: "brian town" <briantownjr@gmail.com> À: "Daniel Lindgren" <bd.dali@gmail.com> Cc: "x2go-user" <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Envoyé: Mardi 13 Juin 2017 15:57:57 Objet: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
I agree with Walid about XRDP being super fast and snappy with low resource intensive desktops. It worked really well for me with a XFCE set up on one project I was working on. However both XRDP and X2GO could not provide a good visualization for my current project that has thin clients pulling down LTSP images. The LTSP desktop images are all low resource but we use them as a jumping point to connect to Red Hat VMs. The only connection method I found that could support a decent desktop experience for our users as with X11VNC + XDMCP. I went through xrdp/x2go/NX and even Horizon View and all had either poor performance or in the case of Horizon View were just not really meant for Linux yet (the support is pretty awful).
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Daniel Lindgren < bd.dali@gmail.com > wrote:
Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is private and confidential and may contain proprietary or legally privileged information. It is for the intended recipient only. If you have received this email in error, please notify the author by replying to it and then destroy it. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, copy, print or rely on this e-mail or any attachment. Thank you
The thin client point was only to express my setup as well and the findings I had with x2go/VNC/NX/etc. I believe it to be more of a bandwidth issue, as our bandwidth in our LAN is only giving out 2.3gb right now
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 12:16 PM, Walid MOGHRABI <w.moghrabi@servicemagic.eu
wrote:
Brian, I don't really understand your point about your thin clients, LTSP images and remote connection to RedHat VMs.
From what I can tell, the lower spec thin clients we have are older Wyse celeron based with 1Gb of RAM. My thin client boot from LAN with the TCE-NG setup and simply download a 230MB OS image and run from it diskless. They start the X2Go client in display manager mode and eat about 512MB RAM, OS image included (running apps goes for about 200MB). Since it's direct X2Go connection, there is no local stuff, only remote and these low specs Thin Clients perform as good as the higher specs PCs we converted to Thin Clients and which are 4GB, Core i3/i5 and more ...
Regards, Walid Moghrabi
TRAVAUX.COM BAT I - PARC CEZANNE 2 290 AVENUE GALILEE - CS 80403 13591 AIX EN PROVENCE CEDEX 3
----- Mail original -----
De: "brian town" <briantownjr@gmail.com> À: "Daniel Lindgren" <bd.dali@gmail.com> Cc: "x2go-user" <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Envoyé: Mardi 13 Juin 2017 15:57:57 Objet: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
I agree with Walid about XRDP being super fast and snappy with low resource intensive desktops. It worked really well for me with a XFCE set up on one project I was working on. However both XRDP and X2GO could not provide a good visualization for my current project that has thin clients pulling down LTSP images. The LTSP desktop images are all low resource but we use them as a jumping point to connect to Red Hat VMs. The only connection method I found that could support a decent desktop experience for our users as with X11VNC + XDMCP. I went through xrdp/x2go/NX and even Horizon View and all had either poor performance or in the case of Horizon View were just not really meant for Linux yet (the support is pretty awful).
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Daniel Lindgren < bd.dali@gmail.com > wrote:
Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
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I only have 20mbit/s from home and 100mbit/s at co-lo and is working
fine, so 2.3gb should be more than adequate.
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2017, brian town wrote:
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:33:43 -0400 From: brian town <briantownjr@gmail.com> To: Walid MOGHRABI <w.moghrabi@servicemagic.eu> Cc: x2go-user <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Subject: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
The thin client point was only to express my setup as well and the findings I had with x2go/VNC/NX/etc. I believe it to be more of a bandwidth issue, as our bandwidth in our LAN is only giving out 2.3gb right now
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 12:16 PM, Walid MOGHRABI <w.moghrabi@servicemagic.eu
wrote:
Brian, I don't really understand your point about your thin clients, LTSP images and remote connection to RedHat VMs.
From what I can tell, the lower spec thin clients we have are older Wyse celeron based with 1Gb of RAM. My thin client boot from LAN with the TCE-NG setup and simply download a 230MB OS image and run from it diskless. They start the X2Go client in display manager mode and eat about 512MB RAM, OS image included (running apps goes for about 200MB). Since it's direct X2Go connection, there is no local stuff, only remote and these low specs Thin Clients perform as good as the higher specs PCs we converted to Thin Clients and which are 4GB, Core i3/i5 and more ...
Regards, Walid Moghrabi
TRAVAUX.COM BAT I - PARC CEZANNE 2 290 AVENUE GALILEE - CS 80403 13591 AIX EN PROVENCE CEDEX 3
----- Mail original -----
De: "brian town" <briantownjr@gmail.com> À: "Daniel Lindgren" <bd.dali@gmail.com> Cc: "x2go-user" <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Envoyé: Mardi 13 Juin 2017 15:57:57 Objet: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
I agree with Walid about XRDP being super fast and snappy with low resource intensive desktops. It worked really well for me with a XFCE set up on one project I was working on. However both XRDP and X2GO could not provide a good visualization for my current project that has thin clients pulling down LTSP images. The LTSP desktop images are all low resource but we use them as a jumping point to connect to Red Hat VMs. The only connection method I found that could support a decent desktop experience for our users as with X11VNC + XDMCP. I went through xrdp/x2go/NX and even Horizon View and all had either poor performance or in the case of Horizon View were just not really meant for Linux yet (the support is pretty awful).
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Daniel Lindgren < bd.dali@gmail.com > wrote:
Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
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Hmm, my only other avenue when looking at it to diagnose our issues was our network engineer doing packet inspection on all LAN traffic or just the applications our users were using were too intensive ( I can't see that being the case, though it is very old software that requires at minimum 20-30+ Xterm windows open)
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com> wrote:
I only have 20mbit/s from home and 100mbit/s at co-lo and is working
fine, so 2.3gb should be more than adequate.
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2017, brian town wrote:
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:33:43 -0400
From: brian town <briantownjr@gmail.com> To: Walid MOGHRABI <w.moghrabi@servicemagic.eu> Cc: x2go-user <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Subject: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
The thin client point was only to express my setup as well and the findings I had with x2go/VNC/NX/etc. I believe it to be more of a bandwidth issue, as our bandwidth in our LAN is only giving out 2.3gb right now
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 12:16 PM, Walid MOGHRABI < w.moghrabi@servicemagic.eu
wrote:
Brian, I don't really understand your point about your thin clients, LTSP
images and remote connection to RedHat VMs.
From what I can tell, the lower spec thin clients we have are older Wyse celeron based with 1Gb of RAM. My thin client boot from LAN with the TCE-NG setup and simply download a 230MB OS image and run from it diskless. They start the X2Go client in display manager mode and eat about 512MB RAM, OS image included (running apps goes for about 200MB). Since it's direct X2Go connection, there is no local stuff, only remote and these low specs Thin Clients perform as good as the higher specs PCs we converted to Thin Clients and which are 4GB, Core i3/i5 and more ...
Regards, Walid Moghrabi
TRAVAUX.COM BAT I - PARC CEZANNE 2 290 AVENUE GALILEE - CS 80403 13591 AIX EN PROVENCE CEDEX 3
----- Mail original -----
De: "brian town" <briantownjr@gmail.com> À: "Daniel Lindgren" <bd.dali@gmail.com> Cc: "x2go-user" <x2go-user@lists.x2go.org> Envoyé: Mardi 13 Juin 2017 15:57:57 Objet: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
I agree with Walid about XRDP being super fast and snappy with low resource intensive desktops. It worked really well for me with a XFCE set up on one project I was working on. However both XRDP and X2GO could not provide a good visualization for my current project that has thin clients pulling down LTSP images. The LTSP desktop images are all low resource but we use them as a jumping point to connect to Red Hat VMs. The only connection method I found that could support a decent desktop experience for our users as with X11VNC + XDMCP. I went through xrdp/x2go/NX and even Horizon View and all had either poor performance or in the case of Horizon View were just not really meant for Linux yet (the support is pretty awful).
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Daniel Lindgren < bd.dali@gmail.com > wrote:
Hi all,
I have used both xrdp and X2Go for a few years, just personal use, not professional/work related.
I've recently upgraded to Debian 9 with KDE Plasma 5 and had some issues with X2Go, checked the wiki and found that Plasma 5 is unsupported at the moment. I researched alternatives and discovered ThinLinc.
It's a commercial software, but free for home use up to 5 concurrent users. Works with Plasma 5 and performance is good, at least for my use case.
When/if X2Go gains support for Plasma 5 I may go back, but for now I can't use it.
Cheers, Daniel
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is private and confidential and may contain proprietary or legally privileged information. It is for the intended recipient only. If you have received this email in error, please notify the author by replying to it and then destroy it. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, copy, print or rely on this e-mail or any attachment. Thank you
Hello,
Stefan wrote:
After having spent very much time trying to optimise X2Go to make it perform acceptably, I gave up.
I'm sad to say I've also given up :-( It's due to this: https://bugs.x2go.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085
(If there were a more enterprise-friendly support setup for X2Go instead of the donation-option, then I think I could convince my organization to purchase some kind of support offering.)
Anyway:
I know some people who are happily using MobaXterm: http://www.mobatek.net/ It seems that with MobaXterm product, it's possible to log in using SSH and thereby have the user administration integrated with Active Directory, etc. (Which is better than XRDP and plain old VNC, as far as I know).
-- Troels
Seems to be a windows specific issue. I do not see these problems with
Ubuntu (zesty 17.04). I did built the nx-libs so I could use nightly builds which has required version of xrandr. Ubuntu 16.04 works out of the box. Can't wait until Wayland screws everything up.
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2017, Troels Arvin wrote:
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 20:00:36 +0000 (UTC) From: Troels Arvin <troels@arvin.dk> To: x2go-user@lists.x2go.org Subject: Re: [X2Go-User] X2Go vs. XRDP
Hello,
Stefan wrote:
After having spent very much time trying to optimise X2Go to make it perform acceptably, I gave up.
I'm sad to say I've also given up :-( It's due to this: https://bugs.x2go.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085
(If there were a more enterprise-friendly support setup for X2Go instead of the donation-option, then I think I could convince my organization to purchase some kind of support offering.)
Anyway:
I know some people who are happily using MobaXterm: http://www.mobatek.net/ It seems that with MobaXterm product, it's possible to log in using SSH and thereby have the user administration integrated with Active Directory, etc. (Which is better than XRDP and plain old VNC, as far as I know).
-- Troels
x2go-user mailing list x2go-user@lists.x2go.org https://lists.x2go.org/listinfo/x2go-user
Am 13.06.2017 um 22:00 schrieb Troels Arvin:
(If there were a more enterprise-friendly support setup for X2Go instead of the donation-option, then I think I could convince my organization to purchase some kind of support offering.)
Uuuh, what makes you think there is none? <http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:professional-support> - it's right in the Wiki's topmost navigation block.
<shameless plug> X2Go also has a commercial side, where various companies - including my own - offer support contracts with guaranteed response times as well as consultancy and paid-for development work if someone wants to see a bug fixed or a new feature added in a certain time frame. What makes my company special is, IMHO:
Our hourly rate for consultancy work and fixing issues outside of a support contract is 125 EUR. With a support contract, you get guaranteed response times and lower hourly rates if you buy a certain amount of hours in advance. </shameless plug>
Kind Regards, Stefan Baur
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Hello Stefan,
You wrote:
Uuuh, what makes you think there is none?
It's about the support packaging:
Donation-based support is very hard to get manager approval for.
The other options are somewhat hard to explain to someone who's to approve purchasing support, I think. I would suggest looking at how Mathias Kettner's Check_MK support sells packages of "support credits" (which run out after a year or so, so that the support organization doesn't over the years build up a pile of obligations to support credit package holders). The support credit packages may be bought using a credit card form[1]. Then, when there's a need for support, it costs X credits, based on the complexity of the case (which might include feature-development.
Notes: 1: Being able to get electronic invoices would be even better: http://peppol.eu/ http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32014L0055
Am 13.06.2017 um 23:20 schrieb Troels Arvin:
It's about the support packaging:
- Donation-based support is very hard to get manager approval for.
We don't do that. We're not a registered charity or anything like that, so we can't even accept donations. We're a company. We offer support and services (in various forms), and charge money for it, with proper invoices. You can sponsor a particular bug fix, feature development, or our annual community event, if you like, and have your company listed as sponsor, but still, you're getting a defined service for your money, and a proper invoice with that.
- The other options are somewhat hard to explain to someone who's to approve purchasing support, I think. I would suggest looking at how Mathias Kettner's Check_MK support sells packages of "support credits" (which run out after a year or so, so that the support organization doesn't over the years build up a pile of obligations to support credit package holders). The support credit packages may be bought using a credit card form[1]. Then, when there's a need for support, it costs X credits, based on the complexity of the case (which might include feature-development.
Guess what, it's even easier with us. You don't have to buy credits in advance, you pay us on demand when you have an issue. No contract needed for that.
The only time when we regularly charge you money is when you sign up for a support contract because you insist on getting a, say, guaranteed 4h response time on all support issues.
If you don't need that, feel free to holler when you have an issue and we'll respond with a quote (in "x hours equaling y EUR" rather than "x credits equaling y EUR") as soon as we can fit your request in. No monthly fees, no upfront payment, only an invoice when you had an issue you wanted us to fix.
I don't see why we should complicate things by adding an intermediate "credits" layer. For each bug fix/feature development, there's a certain amount of work needed that can be measured/estimated in hours, and there's a hourly rate, so you can calculate the total amount it will cost. This sounds more like a ripoff tactic to me - obscuring the actual amount of hours needed to work on a problem behind some magic "credits" calculation. Basically, when we had a slow month, we could claim a rather trivial issue would need 3 credits to fix, when it is actually only 1 credit - and you, as the customer, would have no way of proving us wrong. On the other hand, if we tell you we need 5 hours to change a known setting in your /etc/x2go/x2goserver.conf, you could rightfully say "My 15-year old niece who's never touched a Linux system before could do that in 5 minutes!"
You don't buy credits from a plumber or electrician, either, you pay them by the hour after receiving a quote - same goes for us.
You have a need for a janitor that is available on call, but on average, only spends 4 hours per month on site, you enter a contract that he's getting paid for the on-call duty, plus for the actual 4 hours. If there's a month where he's working in excess of those 4 hours, you pay him for the extra hours on top. Guess what, same goes for us, too - that's how our support contracts work.
And we do offer electronic invoices, however, as German law permits this, only as protected PDFs attached to a GPG-signed E-Mail, nothing more complex/fancy.
The only thing where I have to give you a definite "no" as an answer is the credit card payment - it's too much of a hassle for us, as companies actually prefer paying by wire transfer by far - a request to pay via CC comes up every 1 or 2 years; that's just not worth the bureaucratic effort required to accept CC payments.
Kind Regards, Stefan Baur
-- BAUR-ITCS UG (haftungsbeschränkt) Geschäftsführer: Stefan Baur Eichenäckerweg 10, 89081 Ulm | Registergericht Ulm, HRB 724364 Fon/Fax 0731 40 34 66-36/-35 | USt-IdNr.: DE268653243