[reddalo]

I still don't understand why operating systems can't properly work without a screen.

I have a Linux "home server" and I haven't found a way to boot up a graphical session with everything working (there were bugs in some applications, like menus not showing up, you couldn't change resolution, etc.).

A dummy HDMI plug fixed it, but still. It's 2025, come on.

[shepherdjerred]

You can definitely run graphical environments without a screen in a virtual environment, e.g. https://github.com/selkies-project/docker-nvidia-egl-desktop which is even GPU accelerated

[Rohansi]

Parsec has a driver which adds virtual monitors so you should be able to use that instead of a dummy HDMI plug.

Another issue is not having a mouse plugged in will mean you have no mouse cursor when remoting in.

[packtreefly]

> not having a mouse plugged in will mean you have no mouse cursor when remoting in.

Parsec has a setting to fix that too. Look in the host options.

[Fnoord]

Back in days (around twenty years ago) I used NoMachine on Debian/SPARC to do exactly this: run GNOME remotely.

Waypipe nowadays allows the same, but I don't think it has resuming support.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Headless X11 machines were a thing then it was all abandoned.

[genewitch]

You can run Windows server headless too, and run individual applications over the RDP protocol, exactly like using an X server on a machine with a screen to run Xeyes on a headless machine.

[alchemist1e9]

Anyone have a good tutorial or reference for doing that on a modern windows system? It would be very useful alternative to VM seamless style and allow Linux X11 system as the hypervisor with windows VM.

[genewitch]

Well, i buried the lede. you need windows server to do it easily; once you have windows server set up, you need terminal services to be enabled and installed for that server. Then you can set up "single application mode" application. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-serve...

I didn't really need a guide, it's pretty straightforward; we ran firefox on a windows server VM in AWS and watched youtube videos, in 2009, just to prove it could be done. We offered thin client conversions to companies. never had any clients, too early, i guess, and everything went to cellphones instead. When i say we watched youtube videos, i mean on our test computer in front of us there was a firefox icon on the windows desktop local, and double clicking it, after a few seconds, would launch a firefox window, but instead of the firefox icon it would be the mstsc.exe icon, and you were not looking at an executable's output on your screen, you were looking at the output of the executable in the cloud.

anyhow the windows server software takes care of bundling/packaging/deploying of the the little "scripts" that let you have a desktop icon and everything else. I think there's a wizard.

edit: i buried another lede. The video quality of youtube over terminal services in 2009 with our crappy dsl was... "talking head" - or as i like to call it "peak apple quicktime video circa 1996" - approx. 15fps

[alchemist1e9]

Thank you for these details.

When I looked into doing it once on a modern system and stopped when window server entered the story. I’ve been hoping there might be a simple solution but that had me stumble upon Parallels RAS which I’ve been considering doing an evaluation of.

https://www.parallels.com/products/ras/remote-application-se...

My primary battlestation system (not gaming but for business) is 8X4k monitors on a custom Linux system driven by 2 high end GPUs. What I’d ideally like to have is many Win11 pro application windows managed by my X11 windows manager.

[genewitch]

looks like microsoft has jumped into this area since i last looked (eesh, 16 years ago is what i was basing my info on!): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/... https://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/technet/download...

so it looks like, in addition to the method i mentioned, you can also virtualize the applications within "App-V" which is like hyper-v for apps (is anyone catching all of this? is this thing on?).

Microsoft made a firecracker or whatever for windows apps and no one told me?

edit: i'm shocked there's not a kitsch-y name for this like "Windowless Office Suite" for on-prem office that's virtualized for app-v... Someone at microsoft should pay me if they use this.

[washadjeffmad]

Wayland. Solving the problems of yesterday, tomorrow.

[thatfrenchguy]

macOS has no issues with no monitor fwiw