Remote Desktop

zorro · 2012-04-29 20:57:29

I have been using Arch as my main operating system for a couple of years on an old laptop - 500MHz pentium, 320M Ram, 100MHz ethernet and 10G hard-drive. It boots much faster than many modern PCs running a Microsoft operating system.

The main restriction is Flash. Most web pages are fine and I have configured Firefox with Adblock Plus, Flash Block and NoScript. At times Firefox demands 100% CPU for 30ish seconds, for some unknown reason. Watching videos on BBC-iplayer and You-Tube both max the CPU and the images do not flow smoothly, dropping many frames.

Yes, I probably need to retire this laptop but it is great to get the best out of it and out perform many new PCs with their bloated operating systems.

I like the form factor of a laptop but I would like a platform that could be extended, ie a standard PC.

An idea is to have a 'base station PC' that provides the performance and this laptop the user interface. I have tried a few configurations of VNC - X11VNC with KRDC/Remmina but the video was still choppy and no sound. Setting the DISPLAY environment variable resulted in reasonable quality video without sound.

Could I control the PC via VNC, configure DISPLAY to the laptop and forward sound?

Is there an efficient way of doing this with a single approach or am I asking too much?

graysky · 2012-04-29 21:02:38

What is your LAN connection? 10/100 or WiFi? That is likely your problem.

zorro · 2012-04-29 21:54:57

Using a wired network 10/100.

Gcool · 2012-04-30 05:34:14

Video forwarding shouldn't be too much of an issue (plenty of options as you've already indicated/tested). For audio forwarding, you should be able to setup a Pulseaudio server.

Never tried this myself, so can't verify how fluently this work exactly (the slightest delay in audio/video sync is annoying to say the least).

sandstorm · 2012-04-30 07:27:50

At least for the desktop sharing I can provide you the following link. It took me ages to get it to work but with the information you can achieve what you are looking for.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdmcp

Best regards
Martin

zorro · 2012-05-01 21:33:09

One of the challenges in trying to achieve any task, like this one, is being able to identify the best methods from the many that are available.

Thanks for identifying these particular approaches.

Last edited by zorro (2012-05-01 21:37:37)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-04-29 20:57:29

Remote Desktop

#2 2012-04-29 21:02:38

Re: Remote Desktop

#3 2012-04-29 21:54:57

Re: Remote Desktop

#4 2012-04-30 05:34:14

Re: Remote Desktop

#5 2012-04-30 07:27:50

Re: Remote Desktop

#6 2012-05-01 21:33:09

Re: Remote Desktop

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