Does anyone use a laptop as a thin client for programming?

Question

I have a powerful laptop, but I find that I don't really need portability and high performance at the same time. As a result, I've been thinking of building a much more powerful desktop computer, and using a cheap, thin, laptop (maybe a Chromebook) to develop on the go.That way, I can have even higher performance as well as better battery life.However, the one limitation is needing to run heavy IDEs like Android Studio. Does remote desktop software have low enough latency to make this practical? Are there any unique solutions to this problem? I know Jetbrains has Jetbrains Gateway - does anyone have experience using this? It doesn't support Android Studio yet, and isn't free, but at least the technology looks possible.

catlover76 · Accepted Answer

There are a bunch of people using Chromebooks for dev, apparently. Some info on Reddit, and there was a thread on here where this came up a little while ago.Nobody mentioned doing anything like Android development though; it was more "you can install VSCode and basic tooling natively on the Chromebook via its shell" or something

sgaursys · Answer

I do use a similar setup and Kasm to spawn required vm. Everything is backed behind a WireGuard running on rasberrypi. Something like sgwork.ddns.net

mixmastamyk · Answer

Yes, it works. Look into wireguard to access your workstation remotely.I wouldn&rsquo;t trust Google to run my hardware however.

sp332 · Answer

Visual Studio Code is split into two parts. The remote part handles file sync and terminal management. The frontend lets you edit files in a local buffer. When you save, the file contents are sent to the backend. This has been working pretty well for me.

ajeet_dhaliwal · Answer

The latest Macbook Pro has 24 hours of battery life and is a powerful laptop. It's not the thinnest laptop, but it's not bad, how thin do you really need it to be? To me the overhead of replacing one machine with two wouldn't be worth it for development on the go, but if you enjoy building desktops that's different and may be worth it to you.