Xpra port?

[Jookia]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2015 at 10:39:36AM +0200, Norman Feske wrote:
> * The complexity of the client does not matter because we would
>   instantiate one client per guest, don't we? The client can merely
>   talk to the nitpicker GUI server but has no special privileges.
>   It does not even interact with the network, disk, or other devices.
>   Hence, from Genode's perspective, the client does not need to be
>   trusted.

That's what I've figured. Thinking more about it, I suppose I'm coming at it
from a GNU/Linux situation where you have to divide a system up in to containers
and you'd have to trust the client in dom0. Securely reusing complex projects
seems to be a great trait of Genode.

> * The mechanism relies on the network as communication channel. This
>   raises the question of how to connect the client with the server
>   running in the guest. Should there be a dedicated virtual network
>   for this purpose? If the guest uses networking (e.g., when running
>   a browser), we seem to need special routing tweaks and set up the
>   VM with two NICs. This is a bit inconvenient but certainly not a
>   big issue.

I'd be interested in having a way to chain together Genode systems and share
data, much like a distributed system. You could then have a network interface
run in the client with Genode itself as a daemon. Perhaps overkill.

> * Compared to the Qubes approach, the use of Xpra involves copying the
>   pixel data. One could argue that this copy affects the performance in
>   a negative way. However, on my 5-years old machine, the memory
>   throughput is > 3 GiB per second. Copying an entire full-HD
>   frame with 1920x1080 at 32-bit color depth (circa 8 MiB of data)
>   takes less than 3 milliseconds. In my opinion, these costs are
>   acceptable for the gain in simplicity (compared to setting up
>   shared memory between the application running in the guest and
>   the nitpicker GUI server).

I figured that too, though it also supports compression and remote OpenGL which
could be something to look at in the future.

> In short, I find the project very interesting. A port might also be
> useful for scenarios where a Genode system is used as a thin client.

Sounds like a plan then. When my interest piques up in to Genode again I might
take a stab at it.

> Cheers
> Norman

Cheers,
Jookia.