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> expensive workstation and cheap laptops as a front end

This has worked really well for me too. Desktop is xeon with 64gb ram and I can take advantage of that power from anywhere.



Same here, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 64gb.

I just realized I don't need that when I am seating in front of tv or while traveling, and as long as I can connect two external monitors to my laptop is enough.

Something "similar" to this in MacBook world is 4k, and you end up with a portable device with worst battery performance and always suffering that you are about to loose your life.

VS Code was definitely something that helped to decide for this configuration.


> Same here, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 64gb

Same here, those two plus a 2 TB NVMe SSD.


I've always wanted to do this but do you run IDE on laptop or XWindows/VNC/RDP?

Also big screen laptops now are more expensive than smaller ones which is the opposite of 10 years ago.


My current setup is:

- Pixelbook with 8Gb. Not cheap ($1000) but I think you can find similar options for half of that. I mostly wanted to try it but I am happy with it now. Important, I just use it for Chrome and VS Code, nothing else! Battery life is decent, you can run linux apps, it has touchscreen and is light. I personally don't care about the screen now, I actually prefer small laptops to carry them and I have two 27" screens on my desk

- I run the IDE on the laptop and lxc containers in the workstation for different projects


For me, everything is on the remote desktop so I can work on any device via RDP (phone, tablet, chromebook, raspberrypi, etc).

The laptop needs no configuration. It doesn't need to be backed up, I don't need any software licenses. The laptop can be lost, stolen, damaged, etc and nothing will be lost.

If I was more mobile, the laptop specs would be more important but I work in the same physical space. It needs to be able to power some monitors and the keyboard needs to be decent for the few times a year I go out of town.

Currently using a Surface Go (8gb version).




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