xzibit 0.01 - release

[marnanel]

xzibit 0.01 is now available for download. xzibit is a per-window VNC system; its development is supported by Collabora Ltd. This version is just a taster of what's possible: there's a fair amount more in existence that you won't see unless you play around. More of it will be more easily visible in later releases.

Do read the README for instructions on setting it up: the checks in autotools for required programs are by no means perfect yet.

How this is different from X forwarding:

• Most importantly, because it works (or will soon work) over Telepathy tubes, so you can share windows with your chat contacts.
• Less importantly, it uses VNC so that it's platform-independent.  There is only an X implementation at the moment, but eventually I'm hoping there'll be Windows and OS X implementations as well.

Other details

• I have proposed a talk on xzibit at LCA in January.  I don't yet know whether it will be accepted.
• The protocol is explained here, and you can see a diagram explanation here.

You may clone the git repository from here.

I'm now working on 0.02, which will have proper working Telepathy support.

Comments

Overlapping windows

[bemasc.net]

Does this system rely on compositing managers? I tried this once for Sugar, using x11vnc's -id option. (You might also like the -appshare option.)

The problem I ran into is that on non-composited desktops, x11vnc would send whatever pixels were visible in the location of that window, so if another window appeared in front, that would get sent over the VNC link too. For security reasons I felt this was unacceptable.

Ultimately, I gave up on per-window sharing and just tunneled the usual whole-screen VNC over a Telepathy tube. If xzibit solves the per-window problem I'd be interested in using it in Sugar.