cywin/x issues

[captainmidnight]

I have a client who has some gui applications running on a linux box.  I am running MS Windows locally, so someone recommended that I try using cygwin.

I installed the following packages this morning: 1) the entire base package 2) the entire x11 package 3) the inetutils and openssh packages (since I want to use ssh to connect to the remote machine).  Basically, I followed the instructions here:
        http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/setup-cygwin-x-installing.html

To ssh into the remote machine, I simply tried the included dos script
        <cygwinHome>/usr/X11R6/bin/startxwin.bat

And once the xwin shell came up, I executed
        ssh -X -Y -l <myUserName> <theRemoteMachineName>
and entered my password and got into the remote machine.  So far so good.

I then tried playing around withsome x apps: xclock and xlogo worked fine (how could they go wrong?).

But then I tried executing a medium complex program, gnome-system-monitor, and I ran into the following issues:


1) speed

The first time that I played with the gui, it was unbelievably slow, to the point of being unusable.  For instance, clicking on the File menu took 2-3 seconds to display the menu choices (which was simply Quit in this case).

Later on in the afternoon when I played with the exact same app again, it executed more more quickly.

Anyone have any idea why?  I am guessing that likely my network connection (a Time Warner cable modem in NYC) was just getting a surge of traffic, or maybe had signal strength issues or something.  Perhaps also the remote machine was having a surge of activity at the time (I forgot to check using top when it was problematic, my mistake).  Or maybe the first time the program ran, it was downloading remote fonts or something that were cached locally for subsequent executions.

I am aware that some personal firewalls are known to cause slow performance; see, for example, some of the posts here:
        http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.xfree/day=20040824
I tried looking at my windows networking state with netstat but did not see the loopback issues reported above, so I do not think that my firewall (AVG) is the culprit.


2) warning messages

Executing gnome-system-monitor caused a ton of errors like
        ** (gnome-system-monitor:30353): WARNING **: Unable load icon Failed to open file '/usr/share/pixmaps/ssh-askpass-gnome.png': No such file or directory
to appear.

I also saw 3 errors like
 (gnome-system-monitor:30353): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to sort on invalid type GdkPixbuf
once gnome-system-monitor is up and running.

A web search reveals that a few other people have these errors too, e.g.:
        http://lists.linuxcoding.com/rhl/2005/msg39096.html

Is the reason for the above because the remote machine is using an old version of linux?

Typing uname -a on the remote machine gave
        ... 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp #1 SMP Thu Jun 2 23:08:39 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Would FC5 cure these errors?


3) fonts

The gnome-system-monitor app simply looks horrible.  The best description that I can give is that it looks like when you take a screen shot and then save it as a jpeg file instead of as a png file: the text looks weird and sorta smeared.

Did I simply fail to configure things properly?  And is there a ready cure for the bad looking fonts?


4) XMing better?

It looks like cygwin/x has been defunct for a long while now.  In contrast, this website
        http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
claims that the XMing program is actively developed and a lot better.

Anyone have any experience with it versus cygwin/x?

[I initially did not find a cygwin/x mailing list, and posted this message to the general Cygwin Users list.  The only response that I got said that that was an inappropriate list, and to try this one.  If this too is not the appropriate list, please let me know where to post it.]

[captainmidnight]

>> 4) XMing better?
>>
>> It looks like cygwin/x has been defunct for a long while now.  In contrast,
>> this website
>>         http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
>> claims that the XMing program is actively developed and a lot better.
>>
>> Anyone have any experience with it versus cygwin/x?

Someone emailed me:

>Did you ever find out more about Xming? I'm unhappy with Cygwin/X too.
>I'm thinking of buying a commercial X server, but if Xming is good
>enough (I haven't tried it yet), I might use that.

Have not had a chance to try Xming yet, so if anyone else has, would love to hear back from you.

I probably will try it sometime over the next month, however.

[aptosca]

I've been trying Xming. I was using cygwin/x but it has issues on my
dual-core XP x64 machine. Intermittently X-related processes, either the
server or the client, would go into a busy-loop, fully pegging one core. So
far this hasn't happened under Xming, but since it's intermittent, it'll
take some time to know for sure if it's happens under Xming.

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-xfree-owner@... [mailto:cygwin-xfree-owner@...]
On Behalf Of captainmidnight
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 6:36 AM
To: cygwin-xfree@...
Subject: Re: cywin/x issues


>> 4) XMing better?
>>
>> It looks like cygwin/x has been defunct for a long while now.  In
>> contrast,
>> this website
>>         http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
>> claims that the XMing program is actively developed and a lot better.
>>
>> Anyone have any experience with it versus cygwin/x?

Someone emailed me:

>Did you ever find out more about Xming? I'm unhappy with Cygwin/X too.
>I'm thinking of buying a commercial X server, but if Xming is good
>enough (I haven't tried it yet), I might use that.

Have not had a chance to try Xming yet, so if anyone else has, would love to
hear back from you.

I probably will try it sometime over the next month, however.
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