- NX uses VFB (Virtual Frame Buffer ) where as VNC uses standard X server.
- NX compresses the X11 data to minimize the amount of data transmitted. This makes NX faster over low bandwidth network.
- NX uses SSH protocol to send data using public key cryptography for authentication.
However NX has one limitation, your desktop can not be shared with your buddy. Everyone gets a fresh session. Give NX a try, I have documented the minimal set of steps in the knol(link above). For developers like me who work on Unix/Linux platforms, remote desktop is not a "nice to have" but a "must have" productivity tools. Let me know what you prefer to use. Have a great evening !!
NX works fine as long as you do not have graphics intensive applications that result in a large amount of X related activity. In these cases VNC will generally performs much better. In my experience allowing the remote host to render the X calls using VNC performed 20-40 times faster relative the to number of X calls that needed to be processed.
ReplyDeleteYep, absolutely correct. I use VNC a lot and only problem I see with gnome is that when I use different key combinations(hot keys) with some GUI application like Totalview debugger VNC crashes. NX tolerates this well. However some of my crashes are resolved after switching to kde and using -Y to forward X11. Thanks for your comments !
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