Comment on XPipe 9 comes with VNC, RDP, and SSH X11 support, a better SSH integration, terminal improvements, and many bug fixes

just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• crschnick@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It is a frontend for standard CLI tools yes, but it comes with many additional features. The focus is especially on integrating standard CLI tools with your desktop environment and other applications that you use like editors or terminals.

  For example, of course you can just use the ssh CLI to connect to your server and edit files. But with XPipe you can do the same thing but more comfortably. You can source passwords from your local password CLI, automatically launch terminals with the SSH session, edit remote files with your locally installed text editor, and more.

  Of course you can do this also with tools like putty, but the difference here is the integration. Other tools ship their own SSH client with its own capabilities, features, and limitations. They also have their own terminal. XPipe preserves full compatibility with your local SSH client and terminal. E.g. all your configuration options are properly applied, your configs are automatically sourced, any advanced authentication features like gpg keys, smartcards, etc. work out of the box.

  The same approach is also used for the integrations for docker, podman, LXD, and more, so you can use it for a large variety of use cases.

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  • just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So it’s a GUI, to a front-end of another tool, and it also introduces it’s own configurations into the mix? So like…building a bigger car around an existing car just to drive the smaller car. Not sure I’m really “getting it”. Like I don’t get why introduced a frontend to an existing GUI-based tool like a VNC or RDP viewer.

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    • crschnick@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah I did not downvote you, feel free to take a dive into the data if you really care about that.

      I think your analogy about the cars can be augmented a bit. I would say that individual components like VNC are not really a car to begin with. VNC is an insecure protocol by default. Technically there are VNC security measures to potentially encode the data, but these are often not used*. Furthermore, even if you encrypt the data stream, VNC authentication options are severely limited. So something like VNC needs to run over something like a SSH tunnel to be considered properly secure. And to properly do that, you need an SSH integration as well. That is one example where these synergies happen in XPipe.

      • Technically there is loads of proprietary stuff that tools like RealVNC do to increase security, but that cannot be considered the open VNC standard.

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    • Cupcake1972@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      the point is to have all of the tools in one view.

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      • crschnick@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        And not to only aggregate them in one view but to also make them interact with each other. It’s not just about having SSH connections, docker containers, or VNC connections side by side, but using them together. For example, any VNC connection in XPipe is automatically tunneled over SSH, so you don’t even need to expose the port. If you add a system in XPipe via SSH, you will automatically have access to a VNC connection as well if a VNC server is running on it. Doing all of that manually is definitely possible, but will take you some time to set up and start each time.

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• atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s basically it. Definitely “not for me” either but some people like GUIs on these things.

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