LPC: Life after X [LWN.net]

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 5, 2010 21:56 UTC (Fri) by ttrafford (guest, #15383)
In reply to: LPC: Life after X by drag
Parent article: LPC: Life after X

You were right the first thought, I did actually mean the libvirt tools and apparently I just didn't know about the remote management stuff. That wouldn't actually help me much though since I don't have virt-manager or virt-install on my Mac which is my client-side connection.

As for security, I personally do everything over ssh and let it handle tunneling X.

It's just that "single-application, automatically-handled/forwarded-by-ssh" situation that I hope is continued after the dust settles.

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LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 8, 2010 9:38 UTC (Mon) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (8 responses)

> It's just that "single-application, automatically-handled/forwarded-by-ssh" situation that I hope is continued after the dust settles.

Given that the X server is still going to be around in a slightly less privileged position on the stack, those applications will still be able to work as they do today if nothing better is found.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 8, 2010 9:45 UTC (Mon) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (2 responses)

> ...those applications will still be able to work as they do today if nothing better is found.

One dodgy thought - what about a remote application embedding a small web server and doing http on stdin and stdout rather than over a socket, so that a local web browser could start the application over ssh?

I dare say of course that if that idea isn't completely useless someone will already have done it.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 6:04 UTC (Fri) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link] (1 responses)

> what about [...] embedding a small web server

http://www.transmissionbt.com/images/screenshots/Clutch-L...

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 9:04 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

>> what about [...] embedding a small web server

> http://www.transmissionbt.com/images/screenshots/Clutch-L...

That is still going over a socket though, or so it looks to me, not stdin and stdout forwarded by ssh.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 6:02 UTC (Fri) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link] (4 responses)

> Given that the X server is still going to be around...

That won't help you much if the application is no longer able to act as an X client.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 8:56 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (3 responses)

>> Given that the X server is still going to be around...

>That won't help you much if the application is no longer able to act as an X client.

Why shouldn't it be able to? If the X server is around people can write new X clients if it makes sense (although they will probably find other ways to do network forwarding when they start to think about it). If it uses Gtk+ for X it can even blend in seamlessly with the non-X clients.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 10:36 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

if all the new applications are written to run on X then wayland has no native apps and does no good.

if all the new applications are written to run on wayland, then they cannot be clients for X and the fact that there is still an X server you can run on top of wayland does no good (except for obsolete apps that pre-date wayland)

do you see why people who need network transparency may be opposed to the common development going in a direction that doesn't support it?

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 19:14 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

Your reply implies that it's impossible to layer network transparency on top of Wayland. I doubt that's true.

LPC: Life after X

Posted Nov 12, 2010 19:39 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

you are right, I am assuming that good network transparency (as opposed to what VNC etc provide) it is going to require some consideration in the design of the windowing system, and since the people working on the windowing system are taking the attitude 'nobody needs network transparency', such consideration is unlikely.