Even on intel, I am impatient to navigate via Gnome/KDE to get to things.
Almost involuntarily, I open up an xterm session and do things there.
That's me I guess!
__________________________________________
Ranga Nathan / CSG
Systems Programmer - Specialist; Technical Services;
BAX Global Inc. Irvine-California
Tel: 714-442-7591 Fax: 714-442-2840
Adam Thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: Linux on 390 Port <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12/09/2004 12:48 PM
Please respond to Linux on 390 Port
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc:
Subject: Re: vncserver/vncclient
On Dec 9, 2004, at 2:06 PM, Ranga Nathan wrote:
> IMHO, plain vnc via browser and without X does not add any value.
> Putty
> is much better.
>
Hunh?
VNC exports a desktop (well, technically, a rectangular bitmap, I
think) and relays mouse and keyboard commands to it, and updates the
bitmap it sends as it changes. On Unix, therefore, vncserver runs
what's basically X-with-a-framebuffer in order to provide that
rectangular bitmap in the first place. On a Unix box, there's really
no such thing as vnc-without-X. I guess if you *had* a
framebuffer-based text display you COULD export it via vnc, but that
would be pretty dumb (although, sadly, not that different than what
many Intel "servers" do to have a serial console, which is--I am Not
Making This Up--to turn a VGA video stream into something they're
running over RS-232 (or sometimes USB, which is at least fast enough
that it's not insanely painful) and ship that out over the wire for
reconstituting into an image at the other end).
However, vncserver is running, usually, with a very lightweight window
manager--fvwm or something--rather than the bloated hog of a full-on
KDE or Gnome environment. And X itself isn't all that
resource-intensive by modern standards.
That said, yeah, I also forego it in favor of plain old ssh whenever
possible, because Unix is designed, pretty much, around the concept of
sharp simple tools that take input from stdin, write output to stdout,
write errors to stderr, and can pipe one process's stdout to the next
one's stdin. So, honestly, a 24x80 terminal window gives you almost
complete functionality, and you can still get quite a lot done with a
dumb (glass tty) terminal (e.g. 3215 console mode). But then I'm
pretty much a Luddite when it comes to pretty interfaces (I
hypocritically type into the lovely and useful Mac Mail.app).
Adam
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