* * * * * X11 is alive? Mark [1] send me an email replying to my post about X11 [2]: > From: Mark Grosberg > To: sean@conman.org > Subject: Of X11 and remote access… > Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:36:10 -0400 (EDT) > > Sean, > > I read your blog post on how X11 is network enabled and thought you glossed > over a very important point. See, X11 is network enabled in that it has > this concept of a program is a client to a display. So yes, if I am at home > I can run some program on my X11 machine at work and send the display over. > > But VNC on X11 goes one step better. It's a bit like “screen” (a program I > still use) but for graphical apps (something I rarely use). I can have my > X11 desktop sitting in some virtual framebuffer somewhere, connect to it, > interact with it, go home, re-connect and it is exactly where I left it. > > The normal X11 networking model is such that I loose my program state every > time I move around. At least for me, personally, I am the kind of person > who maybe yearly reboots a computer such that I loose my working > environment and I frequently move about to different locations. > > So for me, VNC on an X11 desktop makes total sense (well, screen makes even > more sense since my main UNIX box probably doesn't have enough RAM to make > a virtual framebuffer). > > Oh, and VNC is way faster too, especially TightVNC. You don't wait 6hrs for > a window to pop up while they negotiate event masks and other nonsense that > should not exist. > He does have a point, and it's one of the problems with X11—you can't redirect a window to another display on the fly. Or, at least, I don't know of a way to do that. It also depends upon how you work. Me? I don't tend to leave applications running for any great length of time (especially graphical programs) because I have this irrational fear that they'll just keep sucking memory up until the machine becomes unusable. [1] http://gladesoft.com/ [2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/10/07.1 Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org .