OpenGL Hardware Acceleration Support For Weston's RDP Backend

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenGL Hardware Acceleration Support For Weston's RDP Backend

Patches are pending to provide OpenGL hardware acceleration support for Wayland's Weston compositor RDP back-end...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Weston-RDP-GL-Accel

[Hibbelharry]

I can't put this into context, what's the scope here? Are we talking about Microsoft RDP Protocol, or another Implementation? It the second answer is true, is there any software using wayland RDP?

[Azrael5]

Excellent improvement.
Actually what hardware acceleration wayalnd implements?

[Veerappan]

I can't put this into context, what's the scope here? Are we talking about Microsoft RDP Protocol, or another Implementation? It the second answer is true, is there any software using wayland RDP?

Pretty sure it's compatible with Microsoft RDP. Weston already supports serving up RDP, this change adds some open acceleration to the RDP server back-end to speed up frame generation.

[Krejzi]

I can't put this into context, what's the scope here? Are we talking about Microsoft RDP Protocol, or another Implementation? It the second answer is true, is there any software using wayland RDP?

It is using FreeRDP, and is a way of remoting wayland clients (well, the whole compositor). All the rendering is done on weston side and it currently uses pixman, the cpu renderer. By using OpenGL, rendering of both shm and gl clients will be faster on the weston side, meaning also that on rdp client side everything will be smoother.

[Azpegath]

It is using FreeRDP, and is a way of remoting wayland clients (well, the whole compositor). All the rendering is done on weston side and it currently uses pixman, the cpu renderer. By using OpenGL, rendering of both shm and gl clients will be faster on the weston side, meaning also that on rdp client side everything will be smoother.

So will this affect me, RDP:ing into a Windows box from my Wayland session?

[ssokolow]

So will this affect me, RDP:ing into a Windows box from my Wayland session?

If your RDP client is just an application which runs in your Wayland session, then definitely not. (And I haven't run into any other kind.) From the perspective of the compositor, an RDP client is just like any other application. (Aside from possibly some kind of functionality to let it inform the parent compositor that it's acting as some kind of proxy sub-compositor and is responsible for windows from more than one application. There might be UI/UX papercuts which such supplementary metadata could resolve.)

If I'm understanding this correctly, it's about letting the GPU accelerate rendering in applications being remoted via Weston's "RDP server as a successor to X11-over-network" functionality.

[Krejzi]

So will this affect me, RDP:ing into a Windows box from my Wayland session?

It is the other way around; It's RDP server, you RDP from wherever you want into Weston, and run wayland clients just like you'd do if you were physically using the machine.

[kparal]

Has anyone tried this yet? Can I take over an existing local session and serve it remotely, or do I have to start a completely new remote-only session? And vice versa, if I start a remote session, can I then take over and make it local? Can my local session screen be locked while working with it remotely (as Windows does it, unless in "remote assistance" mode)? Is this coming to GNOME?

[Krejzi]

Has anyone tried this yet?

Yes, given that it's already upstream.

Can I take over an existing local session and serve it remotely, or do I have to start a completely new remote-only session?

It's a single compositor, with multiple outputs (RDP client being an output, equivalent to many physical monitors). Everyone can see everyone's clients iirc. Proper multi seat support isn't there, as far as I'm aware.

And vice versa, if I start a remote session, can I then take over and make it local?

I don't think you can start sessions, a session is started as soon as RDP server (weston, in this case) is started. It's single session, multiple users.

Can my local session screen be locked while working with it remotely (as Windows does it, unless in "remote assistance" mode)?

It can do everything weston does with say, X11 or drm backends. This just changes the way where the stuff is displayed, not the behaviour.

Is this coming to GNOME?

Probably not. It's highly weston specific. GNOME has their own VNC server (not RDP), which they may or may not get to work with wayland compositor.