[oclug] This is what Linux was made for....

[Adrian Irving-Beer]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 02:36:07PM -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:

> I've tried it.  Believe me it works.  X is not the network hog many
> people claim.

Hm, then I was under the impression it was much worse.  I've never
actually measured it, or had a high-numbers situation to test with.
And my only real test cases were generally either too fast to notice
or too slow to use X, period. :)

> I have seen 30 Xterminals used on 10Mb networks - they work really
> well on 100Mb switches.

This is good to hear.  I still wish there were a tighter
protocol, i.e. one that was built from the beginning with
consideration for window management, etc.  (From what I hear,
that was basically a tack-on.)

Most of what I know about the X protocol tends to be empirical /
anecdotal, though.  For example, I still don't know if any X data is
compressed, nor how lbxproxy works (presumably just compression if X
doesn't do it).

> VNC is generally better on low bandwidth links and X performs better
> on LANs.  VNC is noticably slower running over a LAN in my
> experience (many years worth of using both apps).

Definitely.  'raw' mode can help here, and is the default for
localhost connects, but X is still nicer to manage in that situation.

> One company here in Toronto changed most of their users to
> Xterminals.  They reported most of the non-technical users could not
> tell the difference and did not understand there was a difference.

I guess I only have my own (mostly Windows) company to compare to -- I
had no idea the corporate world was that ignorant of their own
technology. ;)

> Companies are out there using Xterminals. [. . .] Most of them are
> just not making a big deal about it.

Right, because they have less to complain about, and no expensive
software to show off. ;)
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