[X2go-User] Fairly severe problems for our Windows users

[John A. Sullivan III]

Hello, all.  Internally, we are almost exclusively a Linux desktop shop
and our experiences with X2Go are simply amazing.  We architected a very
powerful back end and the applications just explode on the screen even
though all of them are across WAN connections.  The X2Go performance is
generally much better than our local systems.

However, most of our initial clients are Windows users (for the X2Go
client) and they are continually complaining about bad performance to
the point we have stopped major new rollouts.  We bit the bullet and
installed Windows on our local systems and . . .  they are right.  The
Windows client performance is much worse.  I'll outline what I have seen
but I have seen it consistently in 3.0.1-4, 3.0.1.18 with Xming, and
3.0.1.18 with vcxsrv.  I also tried Pyhoca (0.7) but it kept mangling my
authentication so I cannot report on it.

There are two different types of problems.  The first is generally
laggard response.  Typing, screen refreshes, scrolling - everything is
generally slower.  I would guess this is simply because we must shim a
local X server between NX and GDI and it may simply be the way life is.
I was hoping it would not be so noticeable.

The second problem is far worse, however.  It seems that sometimes
screen painting of the active application stalls.  Again, we've seen
this on all three platforms described above.  We most often see this in
Iceweasel (we are using Debian X2Go Servers).  Users will have multiple
tabs open and will switch from one or the other or from one widget in an
Ajax application to another and nothing happens for literally a minute
or two.  They can switch to other applications and work there so this is
not simply packet loss on the line.  The application itself does not
update the screen.  After a minute or two, everything they typed or the
results or their mouse clicks all appear.

This is the killer issue right along with the disappearing mouse.  We
cannot have our users wait for a minute or two every few minutes while
they are working on their applications.  Again, they can move to a
different application and work but their previously active application,
usually Iceweasel, just pauses and then catches all events up a minute
or so later.

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot and fix this? Thanks - John