XFree86 over a network

[Kevin Buettner]

On Nov 11, 10:17am, George Toft wrote:

> VNC was designed to reproduce a screen over a network.  You
> can actually end your VNC session, go somewhere else, and pick
> it back up later.  Since VNC is displaying the whole screen (there
> are some optimizations to make this faster), it is slower to use
> than an X Server.

It depends upon the application.  There are some X applications that
are so network intensive that you're better off using VNC.  For
example, I once worked on a product which was quite usable using
VNC over an ISDN connection but which was completely unusable
using the X11 protocol over the same ISDN connection.

[...]
> Another benefit of an X Server is that you can run graphics 
> programs from a box that has no graphics card installed and it
> need not be running X.  VNC merely duplicates the graphics
> screen.

I believe this is true for the VNC server running on Windows, but this
is not true for Unix (or Linux).  The VNC server has no relationship
to the graphics card that you're using on the box.  It is possible to
run a VNC server on a headless Linux box.  It's also possible to run a
VNC server at different resolutions and depths on a box with a
graphics card.  This can be a useful tool for testing X applications.

Kevin