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by brundolf 1780 days ago
I recently set up a home Linux server and I've been doing my personal projects on it via VSCode's remote development (from my MacBook and my Windows desktop). The server isn't actually as powerful as those machines, but the convenience of having a single env regardless of client has still been fantastic (not to mention getting all the Linux niceties despite working from Windows).

Doing it in the cloud probably carries some risks for a business that need to be factored in, but I'm sold on the thin-client dev workflow. I'm wishing I could do it at my day job so my laptop stops screaming at me from all the Docker containers.

3 comments

This mirrors my experience. It is nice not really having to care what type of machine I am given by my employer since my environment is going to feel exactly the same regardless.

And who knows maybe since you have your server running headless it is effectively on par with your laptops. These days most of my cpu cycles on my laptop are spent on Slack or Chrome!

Hadn't thought about that angle, but yeah, I guess it really is splitting the load
Agreed, this setup is super nice for personal work! Adding a raspberry pi as a jump box with wake on lan saves some money on electricity too. I've been using that with a big desktop computer instead of a server and it pretty much works for remote development while out of the house.
Yeah, I'm using an older desktop as my server.

I'd like to set it up for out-of-house stuff, I just haven't gotten around to messing with port forwarding, static IP, etc, not to mention guarding against all the potential security issues

a way that I've found to do this securely is to have a small constantly running cloud server $5 pm with OpenVPN on it. Then have your server connect and join the VPN on both laptop and server. If it's configured properly you'll be able to get them to communicate
How are you accessing the box away from your local network? Just exposing the box to the internet via your router or using something like Tailscale?
Tbh I haven't gotten that far. Of course, I also haven't really had the need yet with covid times