[plug] Re: Re-attaching to GUI apps (Terminal Server comparison)

[Peter Wright]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 10:12:15PM +0800, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Monday 21 January 2002 09:21, Peter Wright wrote:
> > There is one particular advantage over X11, though, and that it that
> > you can disconnect your "remote desktop" connection and reconnect at a
> > later date
> 
> You can do that using an X tool (OTTOMH it's called xx) and the virtual 
> display driver. Not as seamless but it works.

Okay, dammit Leon, you're going to have to tell me where to find this tool
now. I'm intrigued. :)

> You can  [ do cool stuff... ]
> Try that with Terminal Server. (-:
[ more stuff... ]
> Try that with Terminal Server (and no, I don't mean open 30 empty 
> copies of Word, I mean do real stuff). Try that with Terminal Server. (-:
[ and more stuff... ]
> Try that with Terminal Server. (-:

It's okay, Leon. Breathe. Breathe! ;-)

> Perhaps most telling of all, the total licencing cost of any of the above
> scenarious is $0 with Linux, $ghasp with Terminal Server.

Indeed. If it wasn't for the fact that my work has already "paid" for it
(and they've also paid for a license for Together
(http://www.togethersoft.com/) which we never use, and we have a site
license for the Rational suite of products, out of which we use maybe two
apps... *sigh*...), I'd probably be hesitant about recommending we buy it
just so I could make use of it. I'd probably just try to make do with VNC
by itself.

Anyway, you don't need to convince me. I was told at least some of the
<sarcasm form=mild>fascinating</sarcasm> history of Terminal Server and/or
Citrix by a workmate today. Quite amusing how quickly (and thoroughly)
Microsoft can change their tune when they realise they've completely missed
a boat - and then do a convincing job of pretending they always thought the
new way!... eg. the Internet was always important to them, the
world-wide-web was important, Java was important (though now "dot net"/C#
is important), blah blah blah...

I think a large part of why I'm impressed by Terminal Services is that a
Microsoft Windows operating system could do something really useful that I
simply wasn't aware it could do - and I was in a position to actually make
_use_ of this something.

It's not really something all that amazing - hell, if it wasn't a graphical
application that needed to run (and the applications we need to run on
these machines really don't need to be graphical) and I was dealing with
Linux/Unix machines, I'd just run them inside a screen session, via ssh. If
they needed to be graphical, I'd run them from a screen session pointing to
a vnc-server-supplied X display.

I guess the best analogy I can make is that if you had a not terribly
bright, somewhat maths-phobic person who'd somehow managed to grasp basic
algebra and find the root of a few quadratic equations. It's like, wow,
well done, I'm really impressed - but it's not like the accomplishment is
anything impressive in and of itself, just that it'd been done by someone
you didn't think was capable of it. ;-)

> Cheers; Leon

Pete.
-- 
http://akira.apana.org.au/~pete/

-- 
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.