Thursday, May 21, 2026

xpra: More responsive remote connections

xpra start ssh://server/ --exit-with-children --start-child=terminator --encoding=jpeg --min-speed=100 --min-quality=0 --compress=1 --bandwidth-detection=yes --pixel-depth=16 --auto-refresh-delay=0 --video-scaling=2 --dpi=96
--min-speed — higher is faster. 100 is the maximum, meaning "always encode as fast as possible, never slow down for quality."

--min-quality — lower is faster. 30 means "allow aggressive quality reduction to save bandwidth." Setting it to 0 lets xpra reduce quality even further dynamically

Or run persistent server on the remote server

On the server: xpra start :100 --start-child=xfce4-terminal
On the client:
xpra attach ssh://curtin/:100 --encoding=jpeg --min-speed=100 --min-quality=0 --compress=1 --bandwidth-detection=yes --pixel-depth=16 --auto-refresh-delay=0 --video-scaling=2 --dpi=96