A Preview Of Rdesktop On An N800

[dschroeter]

My first post here; be nice.

To help pass the time, I broke out my Nokia N800 and managed to get rdesktop (with pyrdesktop GUI) and hamachi running. Now I can (pretty) securely view any of my machines over LAN or the web. The refresh is sufficiently quick, the resolution is surprisingly usable and it is SO much nicer to have access to a proper OS with the resources of a desktop.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with the Pandora? A great deal, I reply. The N800 shares the same resolution (800x480) as the Pandora and these forums lead me to believe that we'll have ports of rdesktop and hamachi up and running soon after launch. My biggest gripes of this setup are the N800's weakish processor and not having a keyboard, so Pandora + rdesktop = butter.

Caveats:
1) There's no sound. This is a listed feature of rdesktop and works on normal machines, so maybe possible?
2) Simulating right mouse clicks on a non-tablet version of Win7 took a bit of effort: I'm using softrightclick, an autohotkey .exe. Maybe we can map the triggers for left and right clicks?
3) Obviously this is for mostly static stuff; you won't be playing Crysis on your Pandora. Maybe the Pandora's GPU can be used for quicker updates a la VNC?
4) The screenshots will rat me out - I use Windows. BUT linux distros should work similarly, or you can run Virtualbox on a special port and use the built-in RDP viewer as shown below.
5) Although rdesktop is a snap to setup, hamachi isn't click-and-go on the N800. Maybe some wonderful dev will make this happen?

I'm hoping there are devs who are interested in this setup because it is really handy.

Screenshots were promised; enjoy!

Windows 7 Start Menu:

You are here:

The onscreen keyboard:

uTorrent and Calculator:

Some Linux love:

 

[PhonicUK]

I like now nicely Windows 7 takes too the 800x480 display. I can see myself using this a lot!

Shame that the guys developing VNC are too hung-up on using it *only* for server administration, that they won't use MPEG compression for high-speed video. Ah well. I yearn for a solution to stream my machines desktop in real-time somewhere else to play games

 

[gruso]

Win7 does look good on the small screen. I think I'll be making use of this too. Thanks for the pics!

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

I like now nicely Windows 7 takes too the 800x480 display. I can see myself using this a lot!

Shame that the guys developing VNC are too hung-up on using it *only* for server administration, that they won't use MPEG compression for high-speed video. Ah well. I yearn for a solution to stream my machines desktop in real-time somewhere else to play games

The issue with that is latency and bandwidth. You're talking about streaming AT LEAST 640x480 resolutions through the internet, with compression, at a framerate that's high enough to play games at. Considering how poorly fraps does, I'm not sure if that's really possible.

But VNC works incredibly well and I don't go anywhere where there are PCs without taking the viewer with me.

 

[amf66]

This sounds good. If/when it gets ported to the Pandora I'll definitely make use of it. Maybe eventually there will be VNC client that will have video good enough to play games on...

 

[femngi]

It's no surprise Windows 7 works on a small screen. IIRC a lot of the emphasis on making it 'faster' was so that it could compete with Linux and XP on netbooks.
I still prefer UNR's interface though.
Back on topic I can see this possibly being extremely useful but I'll reserve judgement until we can see exactly what it's capable of.

 

[TheRain]

That looks REALLY nice. I'm really hoping to be able to get a cisco vpn compatible vpn connection and hop on to my work machine with the Pandora

 

[fr4n]

That looks REALLY nice. I'm really hoping to be able to get a cisco vpn compatible vpn connection and hop on to my work machine with the Pandora

Same here. Hope vpnc will do the trick.

It might also be possible to recompile the Shrew Soft VPN Client for ARM.

 

[Tor]

I long ago made a .deb out of hamachi and set up for N800.
However these days I would use n2n instead, which is open source and easy to get running. It doesn't depend on someone else's server (unlike hamachi), the nit is that you will need access to a computer which you can use as server though. But it's easy to get working anyway. (for those that don't know, these are simplistic VPN solutions).

And in general -- anything running on the Nokia tablets should be easy to get working on the Pandora.

 

[borgqueenx]

Rdesktop stands for remote desktop? so remote control your windows pc?
...nothing for me if so.

 

[Parkydr]

If you use Linux, a remote X session will be a lot more efficient than VNC.

 

[Spirit]

If you use Linux, a remote X session will be a lot more efficient than VNC.

Not if you use a Desktop Environment. Remote X (I supposed you mean through SSH) is way slower than VNC if anything graphical is involved.

 

[Tor]

If you use Linux, a remote X session will be a lot more efficient than VNC.

Er, what? That is only true on a low-latency connection (read: Local LAN). If there is any latency whatsoever then VNC is vastly faster than remote X, including compressed remote X through e.g. SSH.

As an example, I'm using a simple graphical UI over a remote link (fast, but due to distance there's some latency). With a remote compressed X session takes ten minutes to get running, while with VNC it's close to local startup time.

This is all due to the X protocol which is very inefficient in long latency situations because it transfers way too much data. Even if you compress this you're out of luck. VNC solutions instead tries to minimise the traffic by being more intelligent about what's transferred.

 

[WoD]

How fortunate I've just bought myself a Nokia N810 to try these things on At £130 I couldn't resist.

Does it support the Nokia N810 keyboard? That's going to be the closest approximation to a Pandora I can get.