If you have screens attached to your PCs but want to avoid the pile of keyboards and mice, you might try using Synergy. This allows your mouse to roam across screens (taking keyboard focus with it). Supported (but recently unloved) on OSX, Unix and Windows.
Clifford Heath.
Means configuring (and maintaining) VNC "server" on the UNIX machines in addition to "clients" on the *other* machines (and, that "service" is useless for my X terminals).
Here, VNC would just be a kludge that tries to approximate what X already *does*. (I *really* don't like adding tools that just duplicate what other tools already are doing -- well -- for me)
Ah, this is a clever little idea! I'm not sure how willing I would be to embrace it, though. E.g., until the OS is up and running (and clients started), you are operating without a usable keyboard. So, problems with the boot mean you have to drag out a keyboard to troubleshoot it.
Also, the "server" machine needs to be up all the time.
I have each "work area" configured with a pair of displays attached to a pair of machines (i.e., the displays have A/B switches built in). Since I am usually working with one machine or the other, it's no trouble to grab whichever keyboard/mouse I need (one set sits on the desk, the other in a drawer 2 inches below).
[note that accessing Yet Another Machine in a window is a trivial problem to solve]The fun part comes when you want to use *both* machines and have one monitor on each of them, concurrently. You really have to be alert to know which keyboard/mouse you should be using "over here" vs. "over there" :-/ (this is the scenario where your gizmo would be a clear win).
I'll bookmark this for future reference. Thanx!
The same is true for Xming and Cygwin's X server, although you need to explicitly use the -multiwindow or -rootless flags, otherwise you get one big window.
There are two main choices with VNC: a VNC-specific X server (Xvnc) which doesn't need or use video hardware, or a VNC add-on to a real X server (x11vnc). With the latter, you get whatever hardware acceleration your real X server provides. However, you're still transferring raster data over the network, which can be taxing for applications performing continuous display updates.
Yes, I do that too. I have a Linux server in my office that runs headless VirtualBox virtual machines, and connect to them with rdp whenever ssh is not sufficient. If I need gui control of the host, I use VNC - but there is no point in running a VNC server inside the VirtualBox machines when RDP does just as well.
I didn't know about x11vnc in that mode. But I don't see it as very useful - the point of hardware acceleration (for video, 3D, etc.) is to get fast updates, and you lose that when transferring raster data. Still, it might have some uses, and it's nice to know about.
Xming won't run XDMCP *without* being in "one big window" mode.
I didn't even bother looking at Cygwin -- I abhor having to download an installer that, *then*, decides what *it* has to download (I wasn't able to find a rolled up "here is a complete package" version). [None of the machines I would install it on are "routed" to the outside world]
I spent a few hours playing with a friend's laptop running eXceed. This worked like a charm. I forgot how many other tools came in the eXceed package (most of which I can live without). And, I forgot to test their NFS server (and client) before returning the laptop.
I didn't pursue the Cygwin option -- objecting to the "install me and then I will tell you what you *really* want to download" approach (yes, I know why it *thinks* it needs to do that and suspect that is a pretty good indication of bloat -- "we don't want to have to re-download all this OTHER cruft that you would otherwise need *if* you already have it").
"Hi, I want to buy a hammer!"
"Great! Let us look through your toolbox to make sure that you have the prerequisites BEFORE we sell you the hammer. What's that you say? No, I'm sorry, we cant just *tell* you what those would be -- it's WAY too complicated for you to understand. And, if you *did* understand, you would probably be turned off on our Hammer 1.0 product when you realized you also needed ElectricalTape 2.7, Screwdriver 1.8 and BowSaw 9.4 in order to use it -- and, of course, the inevitable LargerToolbox 6.4!"
Thanks! I'll have a look.
As is usually the case with X-vs-VNC, which one wins depends upon the amount of protocol data needed for X versus the amount of raster data needed for VNC. x11vnc favours complex scenes and smaller windows, while a remote X server (with software OpenGL) favours simple scenes and larger windows. A faster network tends to favour x11vnc; the remote X server is likely to be limited by rendering speed rather than network bandwidth.
It's not "if you already have it", it's "if you don't actually need it". Cygwin is a fairly complete Unix distribution for Windows. Very few people will want to download all of it. There isn't a distinct "X server and associated utilities" package.
In any case, there isn't much point in choosing Cygwin's X server over Xming. They appear to share largely the same code base, but Xming removes the dependence upon the Cygwin DLL.
XDMCP works with "-rootless"; it doesn't work with "-multiwindow". OTOH
-rootless is a bit weird (it's "one big window" without the big window, if that makes any sense).
The latter is the "problem". E.g., damn near any existing machine "site" can be viewed as a large collection of apps with overlapping requirements. An installer can be smart enough to not overlay "version N" of a .so/.dll/etc. with "N-1" (or, install them alongside each other, suitably named -- in case an app *needs* an older version).
Presumably, folks have some *other* part of the "system" so the installer's role is not to download cruft that is already present on the system (I suspect it also decides to *update* things that you may already have DL'ed). So, in that sense, it is trying to NOT download things that you may already have (e.g., core libraries and other parts of the run-time system).
I deal with this each time I build a "port"/package from source -- this needs that which also relies on something else...
Seems best to avoid yet another "empire" of code trying to coexist in a foreign (inhospitable?) environment. The eXceed product looks like it will do everything I need. I'll tinker with the PC-Xware trial just to see where the latency issue originates (it might uncover a problem elsewhere in my infrastructure).
I'm a bit late to this, too busy with work etc, but have used Labf nfs client with the solaris server here since around v2 (now v3.7) and it just works. Low cost per licence at 40 euros per box as well compared to the other high vendors. Have used cygwin for years as well, but not installed as a windows 'service'. Fairly low footprint and inobtrusive in windows terms. Gives me all the usual unix utils, as well as an X environment so I can run the nedit editor. It's also trivially easy to select / add packages from setup.
No issues really...
Regards,
Chris
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