Persona: Senior Systems Architect / Infrastructure Lead
Abstract:
This transcript documents the February 17, 2026, Open Research Institute (ORI) FPGA Meetup, focusing on infrastructure upgrades for remote digital radio development. The primary technical objective discussed is the migration of the remote lab’s display protocol from VNC to Rust Desk to improve performance, window scaling, and audio support.
The discussion details significant implementation hurdles, including the limitations of legacy virtual machines (Ubuntu 18.04), the complexities of simulating displays for headless VMs, and the necessity of rolling back from the Wayland display protocol to X11 to ensure software compatibility. While the transition has introduced dependencies issues and required manual environment tuning, the engineering team reports a clear path forward for upgrading the VM stack to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to stabilize the new remote access toolkit.
ORI Remote Lab Infrastructure and Protocol Migration Analysis
0:00:12 Meeting Intent: The ORI FPGA meetup serves as a technical sync for open-source digital radio work, focusing on progress, blockers, and resource allocation.
0:00:36 Transition to Rust Desk: The remote lab is upgrading its screen-sharing capability from VNC to Rust Desk. A relay server has been established on "Chonk," the primary VM host in San Diego.
0:01:19 Legacy OS Constraints: Older VMs ("Choco Cat" and "Karapi") currently run Ubuntu 18.04. Although Rust Desk documentation suggests support for version 18, stability issues necessitate an upgrade to a more current OS version.
0:01:58 Headless VM Display Challenges: Issues were identified regarding Rust Desk’s performance on "virtual-virtual" monitors (headless VMs). While hardware dongles can simulate a monitor for physical machines, VMs require specific USB port allocation or software-based workarounds to bypass headless limitations.
0:03:09 Verified Environment: Successful Rust Desk operation was confirmed on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), establishing a baseline for future VM configurations.
0:04:41 Wayland vs. X11 Conflict: To achieve desired stability with Rust Desk, the windowing system was rolled back from Wayland to X11. While Wayland is the modern default, it currently lacks full support for specific remote desktop features required by the lab.
0:07:33 Updated Toolchain: The preferred stack for remote ORI development now consists of Tailscale (networking), Rust Desk (display), Visual Studio Code (IDE), and Claude Code (AI assistance).
0:07:54 Rust Desk Advantages: Evaluation confirms Rust Desk outperforms VNC in window scaling, latency, and "quality of life" features, specifically clipboard synchronization and native sound support.
0:08:35 Interactive Tool Requirements: High-performance remote display is mandatory for interactive FPGA design suites like Xilinx Vivado, which cannot be operated solely via text-based SSH.
0:09:06 X11 Dependency Gaps: Manually reverting to X11 on systems designed for Wayland has exposed missing utility libraries. These dependencies are being identified and installed individually as they impact product builds.
0:11:25 Future Maintenance: Upcoming milestones include the systematic decommissioning of old VMs and a rebuild of the remote lab infrastructure to improve maintainability, necessitating planned downtime.