[Video] ThinLinc Performance with VirtualGL on Zorin OS + NVIDIA RTX 4060

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Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a short screen recording we recently made that demonstrates the performance impact of using VirtualGL in a ThinLinc remote desktop session.

The video shows a side-by-side comparison of ThinLinc sessions with and without VirtualGL, using the HTML5 Fishbowl benchmark from EUCScore. The test runs on Zorin OS and uses an NVIDIA RTX 4060 for server-side rendering.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/cuZ7GiYIyAU

Test Setup:

  • ThinLinc Remote Desktop Server

  • Zorin OS desktop environment

  • VirtualGL for GPU acceleration

  • NVIDIA RTX 4060 for hardware offloading

  • Firefox (HTML5-based benchmark)

Why it matters:
This test helps illustrate the difference GPU acceleration can make in rendering performance for remote Linux desktops. It’s a simple but effective way to show what VirtualGL adds in terms of responsiveness and frame rate in graphical workloads.

What you’ll see:

  • Side-by-side rendering with and without VirtualGL

  • Browser-based 3D performance in a remote Linux session

  • ThinLinc streaming via HTML5 client

  • Noticeable improvement in smoothness and rendering speed when GPU acceleration is enabled

Open to any feedback or discussion. If you’ve done similar tests with other distros or hardware, feel free to share.

Thanks!

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Nice demo :slight_smile: If I’m understanding correctly, the “NVIDIA RTX 4060” hardware is located on the “ThinLinc Remote Desktop Server”. So we are not using your own workstation GPU?

If that’s correct, how well does this work in a multi user environment? Say there are 50 users logged in?

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Hi @ngaywood,

Welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

Yes, that’s right.

How well it works will depend on a number of things, such as the type of GPU, what it’s being used for, and so on. It is possible to share a GPU among multiple users in ThinLinc, however 50 users would probably require very substantial GPU resources.

Remote acceleration is achieved using a third-party piece of software called VirtualGL. We have an article which explains how this can be used with ThinLinc here:

Is it possible to provide server-side graphic acceleration via ThinLinc?

Hope that helps!

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