Sunshine VS xpra

> Would the Swift UI also work on an iPad?

Yes, but probably not for the first version.

> Do you have any comparisons with other tools (eg steam streaming, moonlight)

Steam streaming just doesn't really work on linux. Moonlight is somewhat similar in terms of direction, and has an established client base. I know of at least two projects to build servers for the Moonlight protocol[1][2].

The Moonlight protocol is a bit weird, because it's an open-source reverse engineering of a dead NVIDIA project, GeForce now. There are fundamental limitations to the protocol, for example that the cursor must be rendered in-stream or simulated. Using my tool, the cursor is rendered locally, and custom cursor images can actually be pushed to the client, for a seamless experience. This sounds like a minor detail but it matters a lot for subjective latency. I'm also working on employing tricks like hierarchical coding using FEC in the protocol, because I hate VBR encoding for games (it makes text blurry and breaks immersion). Those tricks aren't really possible in Moonlight.

All of the Linux solutions I know about have significantly higher latency compared to Magic Mirror, although I don't have numbers for exactly how much higher. (I have a benchmark to test the latency of my tool, but the others don't.) I'd encourage you to try them out and get a feel for the difference.

Finally, I think Magic Mirror is the easiest to install and get going on the server. It has almost zero runtime library or service dependencies (there's a pesky dynamic link against libxkbcommon which I haven't managed to remove), so you don't need to mess with pipewire or docker or anything - it's completely self-contained.

All that said, the existing tools have the advantage of a larger user and contributor base, whereas Magic Mirror is just me on a mission so far :) So they're likely to be much more stable and usable.

[1]: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine

RDP as a regular or quick solution is actually really decent in this respect.

(1) https://app.lizardbyte.dev/Sunshine

Moonlight + Sunshine for a self hosted solution, works with every OS

server: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/

client: https://github.com/moonlight-stream

You could use sunshine (https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine) + moonlight (https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt). To be honest, at least for me, it works better than most of the RDP/VNC stuff.

EDIT: Just checked again, original was released early 2020, current maintained project started 2022.

On your pc, install Sunshine. It's an open source moonlight server. There's a good walk through on the sunshine github page. Connect your handheld to the wifi running the server & open moonlight. Should work.

I discovered the moonlight client and sunshine server a few months ago. These are open source solutions to provide remote gaming/desktop capabilities with built in input and audio passthrough. I tried NoMachine, but I wasn't able to get audio to work. This looks like a known issue on arch. On sunshine, I didn't have to do any extra tweaking! This allowed me to game on my desktop pc without having to sit at my desk. This was especially helpful while watching my 2nd son. I was really impressed by the performance, I could stream my host's display at high resolutions and frame rates with low latency despite my desktop being in the basement using WiFi. I was getting some instability with WiFi, so I wanted to try connecting my desktop to the router via Ethernet. I decided to go with a headless solution because that gives me more flexibility on the placement of the desktop; I ended up moving my desktop upstairs closer to my router. I figured out a way to stream my hosts display headless by using Nvidia TwinView to create the virtual display. This means I don't need to buy any HDMI/DP dummy plugs. I wrote a Linux Guide for sunshine on how to set this up. If you have any feedback on this guide, let me know! I haven't tried this, but wolf is an interesting docker alternative to sunshine.

FWIW I had decent success with Xpra on Linux, and it's still being actively developed, e.g. the HTML5 client is considered stable now: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/

I use xpra for similar purposes (https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/)

> Xpra is known as "screen for X" : its seamless mode allows you to run X11 programs, usually on a remote host, direct their display to your local machine, and then to disconnect from these programs and reconnect from the same or another machine(s), without losing any state. Effectively giving you remote access to individual graphical applications. It can also be used to access existing desktop sessions and start remote desktop sessions.

I want to move to the "future", but I use several firefox profiles via xpra in combination with xdotool based hotkeys. The fluidity with which I can control my different profile windows without a mouse and with which I can switch between computers with no lag with this setup is a big reason why I have stuck with a Linux desktop, so I am sad to see those super powers go away for no perceived benefit. I have tried Wayland several times now and don't notice any performance differences, just more bugs in Wayland.

`xdotool search` seems like it has been deemed a security issue for reasons I can't understand (if someone has hacked in to the point that they can even run such query commands, surely I'm already pwn'd). Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but to me it's like being upset that someone who broke into your house can see the color of your curtains. The powerful feature set of X far outweighs these minor security concerns.

And it looks like xpra is facing huge issues switching over https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/387 :(, I have yet to be as satisfied with any other free remote desktop software (paid nomachine is close but less scriptable).

I hope these aren't fundamental limitations of wayland, but the challenges seem steep.

They all operate(d) their GPUs just fine. I'm a heavy user of VirtualGL + XPRA for remote graphics usage, which is a constant factor in my life and work. When they're not doing graphics of some sort, they're hunting pulsars in a GPU-centric compute mode.

I've long been a huge fan of Xpra https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra , both because of its "screen for X" original focus (though now it supports shadowing an existing session).

There was NoMachine / nx / freenx but it always seemed to be a weird animal to me, requiring installation as a separate unix user, at least at the time.

One of my favorite bits of software is Xpra [0], "screen for X". You'd run it and it would start another X server (start apps in it with `DISPLAY=:1 xterm` or whatever), and you would "attach" it to your running X server with `xpra attach`.

You can attach to e.g. `ssh://hostname/:1`, so I ran a firefox instance on a homelab server and attached to it from my laptop and my desktop to not have to bother keeping bookmarks, tabs etc in sync.

[0] https://xpra.org/

I’ve used Xpra in the past to connect to a remote system for GUI stuff, but I almost exclusively use ssh because most of the time I don’t need to run a remote windowing system.

To add to this if you need to access graphical applications of an entire desktop environment you can use Xpra or MOONLIGHT (I suggest the second one if you want to game on the remote desktop or need very low latency in general), you can use both of these through a ssh tunnel (you need to enable this and X forwarding in the config) so if you setup and allow access to ssh correctly you can also use these without too much of a hassle.

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