Window Manager Performance...

["Thomas Chadwick" <j_tetazoo at hotmail dot com>]

I've been using Cygwin/Xfree some some time now, and until recently, always 
ran the window manager as a local client (as is the case with the stock 
startxwin scripts).  I started out using twm, then moved on the fvwm2, and 
then most recently Lesstif's mwm.

However, a few days ago I ran the window manager off a remote machine with a 
command sequence something like this:

bash> XWin.exe &
(wait for server to finish starting up)
bash> xhost $remote_host
bash> rsh $remote_host xterm -display $local_host:0 &
bash> rsh $remote_host mwm   -display $local_host:0

[Note: $local_host is an IBM ThinkPad iSeries w/ 700MHz PIII + 256MB SDRAM 
running Win2k SP2; $remote_host is an IBM RS/6000 Model 170 running AIX4.3; 
network is 100BaseT Ethernet]

After doing this, I noticed a dramatic improvement in the "response" of X my 
session (e.g. typing seems to have less lag, movement of windows, scroll 
bars, etc. appears to be more "fluid").

I find it surprising that the additional communications overhead of running 
the window manager remotely is more than made up for by the fact that it's 
running in a "native" unix environment (vs. cygwin).

I'm curious if other people have had a similar experience.


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