Good VPS specs for remote desktop?

[nunim]

... Chrome will not work on openVZ vps? I dont want anything installed on my travel laptop but my vnc software. Everything else and skype will be on remote computer.

Chromium/Chrome will not work by default in an OVZ container:

https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/938

You can use the --no-sandbox flag to get it to start  but this will disable sandboxing entirely and generate a nice warning on the UI.

 

[GaleDribble]

I used x2go as someone suggested and it is very simple. Thanks! I am using it now and so far it has been good. Using 1gb digital ocean VPS right now but will upgrade if I need to.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

I used x2go as someone suggested and it is very simple. Thanks! I am using it now and so far it has been good. Using 1gb digital ocean VPS right now but will upgrade if I need to.

Their work is phenomenal.  Good choice!

 

[cloudfastservers]

Cloud VPS for remote desktop RPD on Windows 2008 or 2012 need 4Gb and Quad CPU for best result

 

[IntegralHost]

I used x2go as someone suggested and it is very simple. Thanks! I am using it now and so far it has been good. Using 1gb digital ocean VPS right now but will upgrade if I need to.

Great Decision. 

 

[drmike]

Folks still enjoying their x2go remote desktops?

I am about to dust mine off and build a few more.

What are folks running their x2go desktops on CPU and RAM wise?

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Folks still enjoying their x2go remote desktops?

I am about to dust mine off and build a few more.

What are folks running their x2go desktops on CPU and RAM wise?

Way too much of an overkill but I have my X2Go session on a dedicated server (Dual L5420 with 16 GB of RAM). With just my "idle" services running it's at an average of 0.06 load and 2 GB RAM. Now when I'm running pretty CPU and RAM intensive tasks (Modelling, running Matlab/R/Octave code, etc.) it's much more, but of course that really isn't something an average person runs on their remote desktop haha so I'll spare you all the details.

Great Decision.

Haha way to necro-post and post a detailed reply.

 

[DomainBop]

Way too much of an overkill but I have my X2Go session on a dedicated server (Dual L5420 with 16 GB of RAM). With just my "idle" services running it's at an average of 0.06 load and 2 GB RAM.

my x2go server, early in the morning:

10:46:07 up 115 days, 23:27,  1 user,  load average: 0.74, 0.91, 0.88

total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached


Mem:         31942      31683        258          0        672      21642


-/+ buffers/cache:       9368      22573


Swap:        18536          0      18536


model name    : Intel® Core i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz

Speedtest (browser version, using Chrome from the x2go desktop)

 

[HalfEatenPie]

my x2go server, early in the morning:

10:46:07 up 115 days, 23:27,  1 user,  load average: 0.74, 0.91, 0.88

total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:         31942      31683        258          0        672      21642

-/+ buffers/cache:       9368      22573

Swap:        18536          0      18536

model name    : Intel® Core™ i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz

Speedtest (browser version, using Chrome from the x2go desktop)

Haha... Well... I mean my specs are overkill but yours are just...

Like shooting fish in a barrel haha.

But seriously, a 1 GB VM is more than enough to run some pretty light apps on your X2Go Desktop. I've gotten it to work pretty well on 1 GB and 2 GB VPSes. I can't say much about 512 MB though...

 

[GaleDribble]

Haha... Well... I mean my specs are overkill but yours are just...


Like shooting fish in a barrel haha.


But seriously, a 1 GB VM is more than enough to run some pretty light apps on your X2Go Desktop. I've gotten it to work pretty well on 1 GB and 2 GB VPSes. I can't say much about 512 MB though...

1GB is working okay for me with XFCE. I've not used it a whole lot yet but think I'll upgrade to 2GB soon so I have some spare room to run an email client and what not. But for browsing, notepad, IRC, etc... 1GB is okay.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

1GB is working okay for me with XFCE. I've not used it a whole lot yet but think I'll upgrade to 2GB soon so I have some spare room to run an email client and what not. But for browsing, notepad, IRC, etc... 1GB is okay.

Are we talking OpenVZ or KVM? 

Glad it's all working out

 

[GaleDribble]

Are we talking OpenVZ or KVM? 

Glad it's all working out

KVM is what DigitalOcean uses I do believe... I know it's not OpenVZ. It may be Xen though.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

KVM is what DigitalOcean uses I do believe... I know it's not OpenVZ. It may be Xen though.

Yep it's KVM.

Glad it's all working out for you!  I use X2Go everyday so it's incredibly useful for me haha.  

 

[Shados]

I mean... this is 100% a relative statement.  I'm not saying you're wrong...  But...  

Yeah 2GB of RAM would be a nice start.  If it's OpenVZ know that OpenVZ basically stops everything in its track when it's our of ram.  If you don't want to risk that (since most desktop apps can be a little more resource intensive than ones without a GUI) then I'd suggest KVM or Xen HVM (if available).

My remote desktop session is currently an entire dedicated server (Dual L5420) with 16 GB of RAM.  Currently my RAM usage is sitting around 10 GB (Edit: One KVM VPS with 4 GB of RAM used, so that's still 6 GB of RAM used for my day-to-day Remote desktop needs).  Granted I do have some memory intensive programs running in the background (and a few virtual machines as well come to think of it), it's incredibly useful.

Also note, a good friend of mine is on the development team of X2Go.  Now I got that out of the way, the benefit of using X2Go on Linux in comparison to RDP or VNC (on linux) is because X2Go is much easier in terms of the bandwidth usage.  RDP on Linux is basically VNC wrapped in the RDP Protocol (or something like this if I recall correctly).  This is important because when travelling most of the time Hotel internet is absolutely terrible.  With the limited bandwidth you'd rather try and save that capacity for other needs.

Depending on what client you're using (Windows Client?  Linux Client?  Mac client? The X2Go Client or the PyHoca-GUI?), I can probably help you out.  It uses PulseAudio to process the audio and... well...  It's a bit finnicky for me as well at times.  Just note that at the moment they haven't been able to work on audio compression for the X2Go sessions, so if you look at your bandwidth usage your outgoing (during audio usage) will probably be double or more than your incoming.  This actually has been mostly due to the lack of funding for features like this (Open source project, needs more funding, yeah).  

So yeah, if you enjoy the software I'd say it wouldn't hurt to donate a bit to the X2Go team!  They make a fantastic piece of software!  

If they're just using PulseAudio's in-built RTP streaming capabilities then the audio would be raw 44.1KHz 2-channel s16be, which takes ~1.4Mbps.

Somewhat surprised they don't have compression going - it's not that hard to capture & compress audio from pulseaudio before streaming it, at least if you're willing to depend on existing programs or libraries. I do some of this myself for working with windows VMs on my local network.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

If they're just using PulseAudio's in-built RTP streaming capabilities then the audio would be raw 44.1KHz 2-channel s16be, which takes ~1.4Mbps.

Somewhat surprised they don't have compression going - it's not that hard to capture & compress audio from pulseaudio before streaming it, at least if you're willing to depend on existing programs or libraries. I do some of this myself for working with windows VMs on my local network.

Yeah.  Well last I asked them about compression on Audio I was told their time is currently spent busy with features that they've been commissioned to add onto X2Go and if I wish to ask for that feature then I should consider looking into sponsoring that part.  

I don't blame them.  Of course they need to put food on the table, so I just let it be.  

But seriously, audio compression would be awesome.  

 

[Geek]

Have to catch up on this thread again.

LOOK!  IT BE KUBUNTU!  http://status.jetfirenetworks.com/remote-desktop-goodness/  ;-)

Had some downtime (the good kind) this week.  Not bad eh? 

 

[Geek]

KVM is what DigitalOcean uses I do believe... I know it's not OpenVZ. It may be Xen though.

Just a little curious which distro you ended up going with.  Have though about spinning up an X2Go next time around.  I've done just about all of them now, except Cinnamon.

https://openvz.org/X_inside_VE <--- this is horribly outdated but I'm going to update it with some of vpsb's success stories