FreeRDP 2.4 Released With Support For Multi-Threaded Decoding

[murraytony]

Unfortunately yes. X11 had a "close-ish" concept but only worked with drawing primitives rather than higher level components. So needs a lot of chatter. This is why it is very fast on LAN and low bandwidth but has high latency across the internet. Not to mention toolkits like Qt and Gtk which just naively draw everything as a bitmap has completely wasted this.


I disagree with this. Many people are. Possibly even worse now that so many people are relying on remote access via things like mobiles.

Not sure why mobiles are relevant. I can play games streamed from Google's data center with almost no perceptible lag on my mobile or desktop in up to 4k resolution. I should be able to have the same experience with my entire desktop.

[ehansin]

A good one I found is to go to the "Ease of Access" section in Settings and disable that "Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows" bullshit too

Thanks for the heads up on this one. I never gave it much thought. Just turned it off to give it a go for a while.

[kpedersen]

Used to have to do in the Control Panel, but this is exposed here as well. I agree the "zoomy" effects are annoying, actually a visual distraction.

A good one I found is to go to the "Ease of Access" section in Settings and disable that "Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows" bullshit too

[kpedersen]

So this so called speed advantage you speak of is limit to the win32 toolkit. Very impressive.

Unfortunately yes. X11 had a "close-ish" concept but only worked with drawing primitives rather than higher level components. So needs a lot of chatter. This is why it is very fast on LAN and low bandwidth but has high latency across the internet. Not to mention toolkits like Qt and Gtk which just naively draw everything as a bitmap has completely wasted this.

Truth is, we're now living in 2021 where we're (for a big part) not as bandwidth limited as we used to be

I disagree with this. Many people are. Possibly even worse now that so many people are relying on remote access via things like mobiles.

You're focusing on the wrong tech.

We are heading in the wrong direction. But luckily so is consumer Windows, so we call all be crap together

[remenic]

Yep. Along with VNC, a good example of a generic streaming technology. Performance will never be great.



In my tests, it does beat VNC considerably. VNC, Pipewire, etc only sends across a raster whereas the Windows GUI system since Windows NT 4.0 TSE (actually Microsoft's WinFrame originally developed by Citrix) has contextual knowledge of many GUI objects (only uses a raster for custom drawing events). It certainly makes the client more complex but it does end up with quite an effective result. This Windows centric tech does well here*.

However keep in mind that the GUI system has to be network aware. So you can't just run a Javax.swing, Qt or Gtk program on Windows and expect to benefit. However something like wxWidgets works because it wraps the underlying Win32 toolkit.

* of course they are undermining their own system by adding pointless tacky zoomy fade effects for kids.

So this so called speed advantage you speak of is limit to the win32 toolkit. Very impressive.

Truth is, we're now living in 2021 where we're (for a big part) not as bandwidth limited as we used to be, and where new encoding technologies have sprung into existence that even allow streaming of 60fps 1080p high quality content with minimum latency. You're focusing on the wrong tech.

[linner]

Hmm, I see USB and audio redirection. Time to try that out finally.

[scratchi]

Does anyone know a good tutorial on how to install and configure the server part ?
I remember I wanted to try it in the past as a better performance alternative to X11VNC, but I failed somehow.

You may find this useful: https://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=16817

This is more then just a how to, they actually provide script(s) that pulls in all the dependency and configures XRDP server for you. I tried it some time ago in an Ubuntu VM and it worked well. The scripts are basic shell scripts that are easy to follow, so if you are using a different distro, you should be able to reproduce most of the steps for your package manager of choice and figure out which config files need to be tweaked (if any? I think it depends on which DE and Login manager you are using, but that might be automated in the new version of the script too).

I actually run XRDP on a FreeBSD jail on my TrueNAS box and it works really well in FreeBSD as well. I just installed the XRDP pkgs, and I don't remember if I needed to tweak any configs manually, but if I did, it wasn't a lot of changes and i found all the relevant info online pretty quickly...I've been using it for over a year now and it's been solid (survives pkg upgrades and stuff too, I don't have to spend time fixing it every time I update).

So yea, definitely give it another try, hope this helps!

[ehansin]

* of course they are undermining their own system by adding pointless tacky zoomy fade effects for kids.

One of the first things I do on a clean Windows install (have been doing for years) is turn off via:

Windows Settings -> Ease of Access -> Show animations in Windows (set to on as default)

Used to have to do in the Control Panel, but this is exposed here as well. I agree the "zoomy" effects are annoying, actually a visual distraction.

[kpedersen]

Pipewire.

Yep. Along with VNC, a good example of a generic streaming technology. Performance will never be great.

Does anybody know how this compares to solutions based on vnc concerning latency ?

In my tests, it does beat VNC considerably. VNC, Pipewire, etc only sends across a raster whereas the Windows GUI system since Windows NT 4.0 TSE (actually Microsoft's WinFrame originally developed by Citrix) has contextual knowledge of many GUI objects (only uses a raster for custom drawing events). It certainly makes the client more complex but it does end up with quite an effective result. This Windows centric tech does well here*.

However keep in mind that the GUI system has to be network aware. So you can't just run a Javax.swing, Qt or Gtk program on Windows and expect to benefit. However something like wxWidgets works because it wraps the underlying Win32 toolkit.

* of course they are undermining their own system by adding pointless tacky zoomy fade effects for kids.

[Mordrag]

Does anybody know how this compares to solutions based on vnc concerning latency ?