Comment by fny
6 hours ago
That's not the use case. The use case is running apps from a remote Linux host as a local window. A performant VNC for specific windows if you will.
For example, you could run VS Code on that machine as a window on your Mac. A more real world example is people accessing guis (e.g. matlab) on lab clusters.
The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra.
> The closest set up for x11 would be to use x11 forwarding with xpra.
Older versions of macOS even had an X server distributed by Apple that you could install on your machine, and if memory serves right you were then easily able to forward X11 from a remote Linux host (or other operating systems running X11 applications) using ssh and have it render to your macOS desktop.
From a quick google search there is apparently still an Apple supported third-party open source project called XQuartz one can use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuartz
X11 forwarding with ssh and XQuartz looks to work the same way that I remember using the Apple distributed X server in the past. Install the X server and then use the -X flag of ssh. Same way that you forward X11 between two Linux computers, or Sun workstations or whatever with an X11 desktop, over ssh.
https://docs.cse.lehigh.edu/xforwarding/xforwarding-mac/
This is Wayland. You could use xprs
wprs? Does not work for mac yet IIRC...
Or running applications within fully sandboxed VMs on the local machine, but with native-ish forwarded GUI. Great for dev.
We run TurboVNC from macOS to beefy Linux servers on the daily. Just tunnel the connection over SSH. It's been solid for 5+ years.
This is Wayland. You could use xprs (or Waypipe).
Sorry, I responded to the wrong comment.
Isn't better to run native VS Code and have remote SSH session? It very much works as if it was local (on fast low latency network). Only issue is moving files.