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fnytoday at 3:55 PM5 repliesview on HN

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.


Replies

QuantumNomad_today at 6:07 PM

> 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/

show 1 reply
adastra22today at 5:04 PM

Or running applications within fully sandboxed VMs on the local machine, but with native-ish forwarded GUI. Great for dev.

semi-extrinsictoday at 6:24 PM

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.

LeFantometoday at 7:13 PM

This is Wayland. You could use xprs (or Waypipe).

Sorry, I responded to the wrong comment.

varispeedtoday at 6:49 PM

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.