Edit: rootless in this context means the remote windows appear like local windows; not in a big “desktop” window. It’s nothing to do with the root account. Sorry, I didn’t come up with that confusing term. If anyone can think of a better term let’s use that!
This should be a simple task. I ssh to a remote server. I run a GUI command. It appears on my screen (and isn’t laggy as hell).
Yet I’ve never found a solution that really works well in Linux. Here are some that I’ve tried over the years:
- Remote X: this is just unusably slow, except maybe over a local network.
- VNC: almost as slow as remote X and not rootless.
- NX: IIRC this did perform well but I remember it being a pain to set up and it’s proprietary.
- Waypipe: I haven’t actually tried this but based on the description it has the right UX. Unfortunately it only works with Wayland native apps and I’m not sure about the performance. Since it’s just forwarding Wayland messages, similar to X forwarding, and not e.g. using a video codec I assume it will have similar performance issues (though maybe not as bad?).
I recently discovered wprs which sounds interesting but I haven’t tried it.
Does anyone know if there is a good solution to this decades-old apparently unsolved problem?
I literally just want to ssh <server> xeyes and have xeyes (or whatever) appear on my screen, rootless, without lag, without complicated setup. Is that too much to ask?
I’m just asking for the same level of lag as I get from basic modern remote desktop solutions like Rustdesk, VMware VDI, Chrome, etc. As far as I know these all just capture the desktop, feed it into a standard low latency video codec and bob’s your uncle. They achieve very good latency.
I currently use VMware VDI and it runs fine. All of these complex factors you’ve mentioned are not an issue at all. The only complexity is the actual integration with X/Wayland.
What’s wrong with VMware VDI? Except for the price it should be fine.
You have to launch an app, log in twice and then you get an annoying VNC-style remote desktop, not native windows. Also it doesn’t run at all on Wayland. Apart from that it works pretty well - fast, and stuff like copy/paste works. I would just like something that is as convenient as remote X, but not dog slow.