On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Ryan Dwyer <ryandwy...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think there's any use discussing whether we think a GUI or CLI is > better. Shouldn't we focus on what the typical business wants and what > they're prepared to use?
This is an easy question. First off, we need a Windows and Linux tool like Putty for easy X11 forwarding over SSH. The Windows version needs to bring an X server of its own (or at least have a fully proper MSI package that you can publish with it, to give a viable X server). It could integrate with Cygwin/X as well or something. I say "like putty" because the actual application interface is going to be different. What you're going to want is a tool that connects across; discovers a specific set of applications; and gives one-click access to run them over a compressed X11 session. It may also be viable to run a local TightVNC client, spawn a VNC server that exposes exactly that one X11 app, and send the VNC protocol over that tunnel. This is equivalent to: $ ssh -L 5905:localhost:5905 u...@remote_host and then running the command inside a VNC server on remote_host, on port 5905. Obviously, this would require spawning an ADDITIONAL VNC server on remote_host for each application running, and forwarding an ADDITIONAL port on the fly (Putty can change configuration on the fly to forward additional ports or stop forwarding ports). Simple X11 forwarding is easier, but you don't get PNG and JPEG compression, and applications tend to be more buggy (consider that if you run update-manager over X11 forwarding, it just complains that it doesn't like SSH). Also it would be nice to be able to spawn a shell at a button-click, and have GUI commands run to the proper $DISPLAY for X11 forwarding. Obviously a $DISPLAY that does the whole VNC song and dance above will require some custom X server magic, or a whole forwarded VNC desktop. A button that runs a command and automatically sets $DISPLAY to a new VNC server and does such magic would be feasible. Anyway. Once you have this, you have a tool to run remote GUI tools on the local desktop. Then you just clone the Active Directory Domain Administration tools et al. Mind you, since Active Directory's effectively LDAP, that particular tool can probably run locally and to ldaps://; but it'd be easier to just port one little ssh tool than modify some of the other existing local server administration tools to compile on Windows and MacOSX and do their administration to remote machines. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
