Sublime renders extremly slow on NoMachine

[PapaDog]

We connect via Nomachine(NX Client 3.5.0.9), and develop on remote Linux server. But when Sublime Text works on Nomachine(remotely), it renders quite slow. It will delay one or more seconds, which drives me crazy. Other eclipse, Gvim do not have this display problem remotely.
Is it designed to refresh frequently to cause this display problem? Or my connection configuration do not correlate Sublime? Sublime is awesome, and I love it. Please somebody get me out of this problem.

[wbond]

Sublime Text composites it’s own interface using a custom cross-platform toolkit, and draws the composited result into the window. Most likely the software you are using is trying to send every pixel that is drawn by ST, as opposed to sending only changed pixels.

[PapaDog]

Hi wbond, thanks for the reply.
I am using NoMachine remote desktop. But it does not make sense that only ST displays abnormally.
Can I change ST configuration to get out of this?

[wbond]

It actually does make sense, because I imagine most GUI applications use a specific toolkit (Cocoa, WinForms, GTK), where the widgets/controls are clearly defined and are drawn within their bounding box. Sublime Text’s interface is implemented more like a video game (since it does a 100% custom composited UI), and that implementation has less strict bounds on the various UI widgets/controls.

There is no way to change this from your end, and it would be a non-trivial change on our end. We did some work in this area in around dev build 3110, however various graphics drivers on Linux and Windows caused tearing issues, so we had to roll it back.

[PapaDog]

I get your point. ST has more flexible UI implementation than common GUI applications, which will cost more for UI rendering(Actually it refreshes from top to the end, lasting for 6 secs, which I observed).
So 3110 will perform better, I will give that a try.

[PapaDog]

well, “Sublime Text 3 dev builds are currently available to registered users only.”.
It seems that I can not retrieve 3110.

[trishume]

Try using the TurboVNC server. I’ve found its the best remoting option in terms of speed with Sublime Text. I do use it over a gigabit ethernet link though so I’m not sure how it works over slow connections. With gigabit it’s almost as if it is local.

[PapaDog]

However, I do not have the “TurboVNC” option, because we the connecting tools, NoMachine, is decided by my company.
And we do not have gigabit network.

[fcerisier]

I’m having the same issue.

I tried with Nx, VNC, X2GO, all the same. Was just about OK using X2Go on the 1 meter nearby Linux Server. Is out of use on really remote machines. Bandwidth and ping are both very good.

Looking at all post on the subject, It seems the ST graphic engine is responsible.
Is there any plan to fix performance issues ? Even Eclipse is doing better on a remote machine.

There are so many companies working with remote Linux servers, I can’t imagine there is no one trying to fix this.

[wbond]

Is there any plan to fix performance issues ? Even Eclipse is doing better on a remote machine.

I don’t believe we currently have plans to make changes that significant to the UI layer.

You could always download the files you need to your local machine, edit them, and then upload them when done. Or mount a network drive and edit the files via that.

[fcerisier]

Well, this is not the use case.
They are some good reasons for not editing files locally.

• companies/customers don’t want files to be on laptops in non secured places.
• companies/customers may block any access except a remote desktop, ensuring not data cannot be transfered out of their network.
• tools are on the server and need the files. I don’t want to commit things just to find out it does not compile.
• the download/upload process is just too tedious
  Having an editor that work on that use case is a must for most of people working on Linux servers. And I believe there are quite a few people in that case.
  As it is today, it’s too hard to use ST on a remote machine. It’s a shame, because I like it under Windows. I even paid the few penies to get rid of the message box every x hits of the save button.

[djspiewak]

companies/customers don’t want files to be on laptops in non secured places

A generally valid concern, though full-disk encryption resolves this pretty nicely. My laptop is better secured than most data centers, from a realistic threat vector standpoint.

companies/customers may block any access except a remote desktop, ensuring not data cannot be transfered out of their network

This is just bonkers security theatre. I understand you might not have control over it, but given how easy it is to transfer data over remote desktop protocols (hint: most of them actually enable copy/paste between local and remote buffers!), there’s simply no validity to this type of restriction.

tools are on the server and need the files. I don’t want to commit things just to find out it does not compile.

That’s where editing via remote mounts come into play (e.g. SFTP). The file remains on the remote server.

the download/upload process is just too tedious

More tedious than a remote desktop connection?

Having an editor that work on that use case is a must for most of people working on Linux servers.

Most? I’d venture to say that most Linux servers probably don’t even have a UI environment. At least, the vast majority of the servers I’ve worked with in my career. I’ve done plenty of remote editing over SFTP on Linux servers, but almost zero remote desktop with a GUI editor running on the remote side.

[fcerisier]

Haha ! Always the same story, I’m glad to hear it again !
I see here people are just better than anyone big companies. No offence, this may be true.
A remote desktop may not be as secure as someone/geek’s laptop. I tend to believe my laptop is betterly secured than most of these accesses. Still, some companies are really secured in working this way (no copy paste, no uuencode available either, no way to get files out except taking pictures with your mobile, hard to get to 100k-loc out).

The point is, there are companies out there that just work this way. Some are just customers and they just have good reasons of doing so. (BTW, very expensive tools on the remote server it the main one).
Sublme Text is a nice tool, but not for these companies, not for working with these people, not for working on these kind of remote servers.
Given that this kind of thread is not new and given that the answer is always about “why would you work this way”, it does not seem Sublme Text is going to be for these comapnanies any time soon. A shame maybe, maybe not.
Never mind…

All the best
FC

[hhoeflin]

I can only agree with you here. I would love to use sublime text (switch from Emacs), but the slow reaction time on nomachine is a deal-breaker here.

And I understand that making such a change would be a lot of work that only few people really care about. And it is appreciated if forum members offer alternatives. But I also don’t like it when those offers of alternatives turn into lectures that you are doing something wrong by using a remote desktop tool.

[fcerisier]

Hi HHoeflin,

ST is definitly not good with NoMachine, unless the remote server is just next door on your local network.

A few alternatives:

• emacs , vi , nedit , … Emacs is still my low end prefered editor whenever I can’t find a higher end editor.
• Eclipse: I’m currently heavely using Eclipse (with Emacs Key map). Windows scrolling and GUI interactions are much better than ST. It tends to use lots of memory and the subversion plugin tends to lock the workspace for too long when it does the refresh on big projects. So far it’s the one that work in the same way in both Linux and Windows.
• visual studio code (alias VSCode alias code) from Microsoft, it’s free, open source and has the look and feel of SublimeText with same or similar plugins. I’m currently experimenting it. I need to use it further to really assess it’s a good alternative on Linux remote servers though.

I don’t pretend this is a complete list. There might be other good editors out there that work nicely on remote servers.

Cheers
FC

[hhoeflin]

Hi fcerisier,

thanks - yes I am using emacs and for now sticking with it. I wanted to check out ST3 for the better python support, but for now I am fine. Will revisit ST3 if i switch away from nomachine or if remote support in ST3 improves.

Cheers

HH

[gatopeich]

Being a registered user for several years this is the only issue really affecting me.
Couldn’t you at least expose some tweaks to reduce the sluggishness on remote desktops?
e.g.: refresh rate, antialias on/off, composing engine…

[addons_zz]

Couldn’t you at least expose some tweaks to reduce the sluggishness on remote desktops?

Can you try whether https://www.teamviewer.com works better than NoMachine?