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Chris Siebenmann over on his personal web page at the University of Toronto writes about X networking. He points out two main shortcomings preventing realization of the original vision of network transparancy. One is network speed and latency. The other is a too narrow scope for X's communication facilities.
X's network transparency was not designed as 'it will run xterm well'; originally it was to be something that should let you run almost everything remotely, providing a full environment. Even apart from the practical issues covered in Daniel Stone's slide presentation [warning for PDF], it's clear that it's been years since X could deliver a real first class environment over the network. You cannot operate with X over the network in the same way that you do locally. Trying to do so is painful and involves many things that either don't work at all or perform so badly that you don't want to use them.
Remote display protocols remain useful, but it's time to admit another way will have to be found. What's the latest word on Wayland or Mir?
Source : X's network transparency has wound up mostly being a failure
(Score: 5, Informative) by KiloByte on Saturday February 10 2018, @09:25AM (3 children)
This. X works fine for me, including network transparency. Wayland does not.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday February 10 2018, @06:56PM (2 children)
Is network transparency even planned for Wayland? (Honest question, because I don't know).
Wayland devs have already admitted they are no better than X at security, and won't let you run root Graphical apps as joe user.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @01:01AM (1 child)
Wayland is going to use Microsoft RDP. Rough quote from a wayland dev about using RDP was, "...a case where worse is better."
For the very rare case that I need to use a remote gui application, X forwarding has worked fine for me.
Some of what I have read about wayland worries me that we are in store for systemd experience redux-- e.g., devs hostile to server-side WM decorations. But, I'm reserving judgment for now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:23AM
And that quite reminded me of some old unix text that compared MIT with some other university, and claimed that MIT often got stuck trying to find perfect solutions and thus never getting anything out the door.
And it may well seem that with the relative success of the Linux ecosystem, the MIT mentality of perfection has set in, and the likes of Wayland (and perhaps also systemd) is the result.