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Comment by throwaway27448 | Hacker News Reader

What is rustdesk and how is it distinct from vnc?

Edit: i appreciate the explanations; thank you.

VNC and RustDesk are both remote desktop solutions, however, Rustdesk is considerably more performant than the VNC family, because the latter primarily sends framebuffer updates, while the former can use modern video codecs and temporal compression to encode screen changes much more efficiently.

> Rustdesk is considerably more performant than the VNC family

It consumes, on the client, 800%-1200% CPU AND 8%-10% GPU decode on my NVIDIA card. I opened a bug and they transformed it into a discussion, without any response.

Performant does not mean it uses less resources, it means it makes better use of the resources

Better is subjective. What is the bottleneck or resource allocation you're trying to overcome?

Going on what the poster above says about CPU and memory - if the network speed or bandwidth allocation is the bottleneck, then trading CPU and memory utilisation increases for lower bandwidth is likely acceptable. If, however, the device is low end and tying up memory and CPU with compression would lead to sluggish or impaired task performance but the network has adequate overhead for lower levels of compression or higher levels of data transfer then higher network utilisation would be preferable.

Different tools, different use case scenarios.

Please detail in what ways rustdesk "makes better use of the resources", so as to conclude that it is more performant. I'm curious to understand your perspective, since mine is very different.

I honestly don't have the experience to speak on whether it's actually more performant or not, since I don't trust networked screen sharing (I use a wired capture card exclusively). The only time I ever use networked remote desktop is when I can't be bothered to hook up the cables, or when I'm not physically close to the machine.

However, I would say that high CPU or GPU usage is not necessarily an indicator of bad performance, especially since higher utilization can mean better performance.

> they transformed it into a discussion, without any response

How dare they.

I just have one word for you: TightVNC.

That's what made me uninstall RustDesk.

I have three words for you: read the docs.

If you're experiencing a bug that pegs you're CPU, fair enough. But RustDesk is video-stream based (in many formats), while TightVNC is image(-region) based. This is actually similar to why you watch movies in, say, H.264 rather than Motion JPEG¹.

¹=similar, not same.

> I have three words for you: read the docs.

No, thanks.

As they say: "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". So I used both applications and TightVNC is just a lot better, particularly in constrained remote VMs.

Docs are cheap, performance is what matters.

> Docs are cheap, performance is what matters.

How do you know if the performance you get is the expected, unless you read the docs or at least look at what others get on similar platforms/environments/specs?

Why not TigerVNC?

https://tigervnc.org/

> TigerVNC was originally based on the (never-released) VNC 4 branch of TightVNC.

It seems to be popular, that’s why I’m asking.

Thanks, I never tried it. Will try.

Funny thing is that the document where they'd explain their reasoning to fork TightVNC returns 404.

I just have one word for you: Wayland

Well first there was TeamViewer which was VNC with more bells and whistles then it became enshittified. Then anydesk came along and ate up teamviewer then that became enshittified, Now we have rustdesk which seems to hopefully be a bit more immune to being enshittified.

If you already use VNC this is not something for you

RustDesk is also open source including the server so you can fully self-host.

That's not really true for quite some time now. Both client and the free server depend on a separate submodule that has no LICENSE file whatsoever. Because of that RustDesk is stuck in a limbo somewhere between open source, source-available and closed source. Also, the whole management of the project seems questionable. Also for some features a dll blob which is not open source is required with no source disclosed at all.

That's what BetterDesk is for: https://github.com/UNITRONIX/BetterDesk

I like that their server is just a single Go binary, but then they go and ruin that with a Node.js web UI and.. PostgreSQL?! Seems like complete overkill. I wonder what gripping limitations they faced with SQLite that they decided it needed PostgreSQL.

It looks like PostgreSQL is optional and SQLite is the default.

https://github.com/UNITRONIX/BetterDesk#prerequisites

SQLite is still the default backend. Postgres is optional.

Seems like that is just a server implementation that requires you to use stock RustDesk clients. So you can't really have a fully opensource RustDesk-like system without requiring a substantial chunk of unlicensed source code as well as a closed source dll blob(s).

I just glanced over the repo, deployment and comments around it and it seems like unconstrained AI slop or at least the project seems to be led by a person which can't use AI effectively for the purpose of software engineering.

I've noticed that RealVNC has hidden their formerly free VNC desktop client, now called RealVNC Classic Viewer, behind an enterprise subscription login, and replaced it with a different cloud first thing, RealVNC Connect Viewer, that requires a login to at least obtain, and is anemic in terms of features.

Not that RealVNC is VNC. However, enshittification has clearly taken another scalp.

VNC is one way of doing remote GUI access (well, more a family of different protocols and products with different capabilities and tradeoffs). RustDesk is just another product that does the same thing but doesn't have a specific connection to VNC as a protocol so e.g. doesn't have to handle legacy authentication modes and stream formats. In my experience most remote access solutions beat VNC for performance, for example.

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