[geeks] Desktops

[jodys at helluin.org]

On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 10:22:06PM -0400, dave at cca.org wrote:
> pwargo at basenji.com writes:
> 
> >I wouldn't judge until you see 'em.  Most of us at work are totally 
> >hooked.
> 
> I guess having a "display network" hanging off a central machine
> is ok, I just don't see the point of not making them all x terminals.
> (Ok, I do see the point, I just don't agree. The eternal wheel of
> samsara - offload the central processor with specialized ASICs,
> then ditch the ASICs and move everything back to the CPU. Repeat
> process infinitely, always considering it innovative.)

True, true. Of course a framebuffer is a specialized ASIC. The sunrays 
are more like VNC. So theres a Xserver on for each client on the server. 
X clients write to the Xserver on the physical server. 

The Xserver then outputs some funky remote frame
buffer junk to the client. What's cool is that you can change sunrays
without logging out and logging back in. You just pull your smart card
and put it in the new sunray. Very cool. And this is all done
because the X protocol doesn't really lend itself to this kind of 
"teleporting" (which is where VNC came from, the Teleport (or some
such) project out of NCD).

And another nice thing is central management. It's a lot easier to
manage one server. (well sometimes that is)

> 
> I do find it interesting that the Sunrays are similar in concept
> to the VAXstation-1000. 

How did those work?

Jody