Adventures in GNOME... X Terminals A-Go-Go!

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Hey all,

So, I have this really noisy computer, and given that I'm not living on my
own anymore and have to keep it in my bedroom, it's starting to Piss Me Off.
Which turns out to be a good thing, because I decided to shift the noisy one
into the loungeroom, and start using a very quiet little machine I have as
an X terminal.

I'll skip the PXE booting and nfs-root mounting polava, and cut right to the
chase: G2D on X Terminal == Hurtage! Here are some hints to make it nicer:

  - Avoid client-side rendering as much as possible

    This means turning off anti-aliasing, because XFT is client-side (fonts
    don't look so bad without it anyway).
    
    It also means turning off Nautilus on the desktop, because the canvas is
    primarily client-side. Dragging windows around with Nautilus on the
    desktop hurts, as does rubber banding around icons (rubber banding empty
    spaces isn't too bad). Pretty much anything that uses the canvas will be
    slow.
    
    Menu icons are done client-side too, so if you turn them off, menus will
    be faster. They'll also be uglier and harder to read. ;-)

  - Choose an easy-to-render GTK+ theme

    That means low-pixmap count, and very few things to draw... hooray for
    ThinIce! I have a de-blued gtkrc called DeepIce (for 1.x and 2.x) if
    anyone wants it - makes things a bit easier on the eyes.

  - Use a single-colour desktop background

    Yeah. :-)

I'm gathering tips and stuff to help out with the administrator's guide, so
please let me know if there's anything else that would help. Very interested
in patches and modifications that make G2D work better over remote X...
Federico had a canvas patch that needs more testing, stuff like that.

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
            What did the sausage say to the tomato at breakfast?            
               "There's not mushroom this morning, is there?"