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Comment by duskdozer

20 hours ago

Like what? X forwarding has pretty much always been the thing most likely to work for me and I haven't been able to find any equivalent.

8 comments

duskdozer

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coldpie  20 hours ago

The big obvious one is web-based tooling. Your information & settings are stored on a server and you use a web browser to view it via whatever device you're on. For more locally based workflows, we have networked filesystem protocols, automatic syncing between systems, that kind of thing. It's not a 1-1 equivalent of running a remote program and viewing it locally obviously, but it gets the same job done, in a much more useful & flexible manner than X forwarding did.

For example, the remote mail client usecase I was replying to is simply done with a webmail client today.

  • duskdozer  20 hours ago

    I don't really feel like web interfaces or syncing are really a substitute tbh, and I'm not sure how they're more flexible. ssh -> run -> gui opens, and the program itself doesn't need to be designed differently to work

    • coldpie  19 hours ago

      > and I'm not sure how they're more flexible. ssh -> run -> gui opens

      But this doesn't work on your phone, or on a Windows or macOS device, right? That's what I meant by flexible, X forwarding fits a pretty narrow set of usecases, while on the other hand keeping programs on the clients and data centrally located on a server allows for a whole lot more options for how to interface with that data.

      (To be clear, nothing wrong with X forwarding! It's a cool tech and I'm glad you have a use for it! I'm just arguing that it's fine for Wayland to not try to support that kind of thing, because we've got other ways of working remotely now.)

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tracker1  19 hours ago

IIRC, it's not that secure though.. I'm really surprised people didn't do more things like send animated skulls to people's desktops.