Hi,

We want to configure rather powerfull home machine (32 GB RAM, Core i7-10700K) so that 3 users can connect to it from their laptops and simulaneously running their own GUI and tasks. We want to buy RTX 3090 GPU and share it for machine learning, Blender and hopefully even gaming. We want to move the computer outside of rooms where it can produce heat and noise, so no keyboard and monitor will be attached to it. So far we suceeded with installing Ubuntu 22 with proprietary Nvidia (for CUDA) driver on Wayland (for fractional scaling). We have troubles with remote access.

1. VNC . Remmina client can connect to Gnome remote desktop sharing.
1A: It works only for one user at a time.
1B: Scaling of native 4K resolution to FHD on some laptops does not seem optimal.
1C: No sound is transferred.

2. X Forwarding.
2A: Running an app with ssh -X is so slow that a warning messsage is displayed. After hitting Wait button every app always freezes.
2B: Some applications do not work at all (many various erros in terminal).

Do you have any pointers to issues 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B? Coul some of them be a Wayland related issue? Is there some third options how to achieve our goal? We are rather new to Linux and want to ditch Windows.

Thank you!
Martin Zeman

I don't have any personal experience with this, but a web search for "ubuntu thin client server" will turn up a number of articles and tutorials.

A search for "Linux thin client server" will likely turn up many more. This Wikipedia article looks like a good starting point.

First of all, you should ask a forum admin to change your username. It's not good to have your email address publicly visible like that.

I think most of what you want to achieve is just a normal Linux setup with remote access (ssh) for multiple users.
I'm not sure how running a graphical session on a headless setup works, but I'm sure it's possible.
I recommend you stick to Xorg for now, simply because more people will be able to help you, there's more articles (X is not wayland!).
You will need a separate account and Xorg session for each user.
Once that is working, I guess ssh -X should work simultaneously for all 3.

This should provide you with search terms and first steps. (e.g. the search term "linux xorg headless" brings me to this article). Let us know how it goes.

Now the rant:
Frankly, I doubt the whole endeavour.
What can you win with remote GUI access? I daresay 99% of it can be achieved with "normal" remote access, and the added 1% are not worth the tenfold bandwidth.

1 members found this post helpful.

you don't even need a video card for that server (see headless setup), you will use the video on the laptops (but obviously you can do that if you wish).
From the other hand without details we cannot help you to troubleshoot your setup. This issue can be network or router related, but also can be just a configuration issue.

1 members found this post helpful.

TBF he specified he needs the GPUs for computing stuff (CUDA etc.) only.
But it's an important point to make nevertheless.

ISTR, and you may find by searching, that remote desktop computing may be a Wayland weakness, or even absent. There are many things Wayland users can't do well, or at all.

Worth reading before investing too much in Wayland:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/wayland-2021.html
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-Wayland-State

1 members found this post helpful.

Confused about what you're actually trying to accomplish and why. Because as I'm reading it, you have three laptops already...but want three people to access ONE PC, to run Blender, machine-learning, and gaming, all at once? And you're surprised that it's slow???

Why can't people run their own tasks on their own laptops?? If you're trying to push 4k video/audio to multiple folks at once from one system, your option is to get a MUCH BIGGER SYSTEM; that's it. You don't say what apps you're trying to run with X forwarding over SSH either, or what the 'many errors' are, so there isn't much we can tell you there...you also don't say anything about what 'machine learning' you're running/doing, or what games. You have one machine and three laptops...use them individually. Have a big job to run? Shove it on the larger machine and let it render...you don't need a full desktop.

If he aims to use Blender, then the hosting computer will need to have a GPU card since the Blender software directly uses it.

You may wish to also post this question to blenderartists.org for specific technical assistance about this setup with regards to Blender.

that is ok, but it is not required for the clients (remote desktop). So first I would make a working setup with that 3 laptops (xrdp, vnc and others may work) and also I would install blender on that host.
Using that host for remote gaming is not really suggested.

Agree with both of the last two posts; no reason that Blender can't be used on laptops to get the basic design done, and fling the file to the big system for rendering.

I think that Citrix Xen Desktop for Linux can make use of the GPU.
It is payware; you can certainly "enjoy" the Citrix support, on the other hand you'll hardly find an open forum for it.

Maybe something like this http://ltsp.org/ ?