[ubuntu-uk] Desktop or Server?

[Tony Travis]

Chris Ray wrote:
> Thanks for all the comments guys. As I see it then; in answer to the
> specific question, the majority opinion is to add the GUI to the server
> install  rather than the other way around..
> 
> In answer to the more general question "why do I want to do that", my
> experience is this:
> I agree with apparently nearly everybody that any serious work has to be
> via a shell, but GUIs do have their uses, like when watching resource
> graphs in System Monitor. Repeating lines in a shell just don't carry
> the same information content as a graph (a picture worth a thousand
> words and all that). Just my personal preference.

Hello, Chris.

I do a lot of admin tasks from terminal windows on a GUI desktop: Just 
being able to copy/paste between terminal windows is reason enough for 
me to use the GUI for admin. However, running GUI admin tools is also 
quite convenient.

There seems to be some sort of inverted snobbery about using the system 
console in text mode for admin tasks that I don't understand. Why would 
I want to be flipping back and forth between text-mode virtual consoles 
using arcane key combinations when I can just have them all where I can 
see them on a single GUI admin desktop?

Most often, I have a persistent NX session running on the server that I 
connect to from various client PC's. I have multiple terminal sessions 
on the NX desktop logged in on other servers. It's convenient, and it 
makes my admin task a lot easier. My 'serious' work using command-line 
admin tools is also done on this same NX desktop...

> So I think the issue is not so much "why do you need a GUI at all",  but
> rather "how do I stop the GUI taking server resources when I don't need it?"

I'd be interested to know if anyone has actually instrumented the vast 
resources used when running a GUI on a modern server: In my experience, 
the impact is minimal even on a very ordinary 2p server with 3GiB RAM. 
Much less so on a 4p server with 8GiB. Where it has a big impact is on 
small servers with very little RAM, being used in dedicated roles such 
as a firewall or router. In this case, a Web GUI is often used instead.

> In openSuse there is a sysconfig setting that puts  a "--no-console"
> argument behind gdm  in its rc script, so when the server starts up
> there is no GUI sitting on Term 7 of the console, but an incoming VNC
> session starts it all up for as long as you need it, than shuts it down
> again.  So, a GUI for the 20 minutes a month I need it and no resource
> hogging for the rest of the time.

Are you sure the console GUI is really a resource hog: Maybe you just 
need to disable the default gnome-screen saver, which is ;-)

> Is there an equivalent to sysconfig in Ubuntu, or do I have to edit the
> gdm rc script directly?  I'm reluctant to do that as I'd have to redo
> the setting every time an update overwrites the script.

In the past, I also followed conventional wisdom and disabled GUI logins 
on the system console. However, I no longer do that. I seldom actually 
login on the system console. When things go badly wrong I fix the system 
in single-user mode on the system console like everyone else. It's the 
everyday admin tasks that I do in terminal windows on an NX GUI login.

As others have said, this is a matter of personal preference: What I 
don't like is an "optimisation without instrumentation" strategy that 
assumes the GUI is a resource hog when, in fact, it's the screen-saver 
that is hammering the CPU: An idle console desktop doesn't use the CPU, 
and is quite likely to get swapped out if memory becomes limiting...

Bye,

   Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition
and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
mailto:a.travis at abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt