Remote Display & Thin Client Notes

Gnome-shell has primarily been tested directly on the physical hardware of a computer/server. In the environment of thin clients, there are usually caveats that are discovered.

• Clutter halts with a fatal error when the Xserver is in 16 bit color. 16 bit color provides much better performance over a network, and was my first depth test. I bumped the Xserver to 24 bit color and gnome-shell initiated.
• It took over a full minute to start. During this time X is blocked from response, so I was unable to watch the spewage. I will start this up remotely and see exactly what it's doing during this period and report here.
• Once it finally displays, most of the canvas areas are just white blocks. Some icons appear correctly.

• Once gnome-shells starts, performance seems ok; considering the fact that I can't read anything. When I click into the upper left corner it's fairly responsive. Adding additional workspaces seems fast.

• The thin clients in my case are running ATI 9250s with the open source ATI driver.
• This exact configuration and setup works fine with Compiz and gets great frame rates.