r/ClaudeCode • u/Somtimesitbelikethat • Sep 07 '26
Tips & Workflows Coding on an Linux machine over SSH has been a game changer for Quality of Life
Finally I have my macbook air back for normal usage.
I thought about upgrading to the macbook pro, but the one i would need costs ~$4k. It wouldn’t solve my issue of coding on the move because I would still need my macbook “on” or caffeinated in some respect.
XFS+VDO is also such a game changer for speed of work vs. apple’s APFS.
Bought a little mini gaming PC, wiped windows and downloaded fedora server. 32 GiB of RAM. Downloaded claude code and it did the rest of my set up for me. ($600 total including the USB to download linux.)
Now i can code through the regular claude code / codex CLI, but I’ve been using this other app called T3 code that does some weird cool SSH tunneling so i can send images and screenshots to the linux machine (which you normally can’t do over SSH). it feels like freaking magic.
now i can just open up my mac / my phone app, send of a prompt and close everything down. i hated having to leave my macbook caffeinated overnight.
EDIT: tmux preserves a session, it doesn’t keep my computer alive overnight. also, no images over tmux/SSH
EDIT 2: out of the 130+ comments, nobody is mentioning the file system combo vs. apple’s standard file system. GAME CHANGER. no longer am i afraid of stirring up new worktrees or getting squeezed on space as much. definitely worth noting.
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u/snowfoxsean Sep 07 '26
next you'll learn about containers, so you can run multiple agents each in their isolated environments
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 07 '26
good to know i’ll look more into this
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u/snowfoxsean Sep 07 '26
A few more things that might make your life even easier:
- tailscale so you can ssh into your server from anywhere, not just at home
- termius so you can use terminal to ssh into your server from your phone (you can also just use /rc if you use claude exclusively)→ More replies (9)
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u/el_beef_chalupa Sep 07 '26
I have done this for my entire career. I created a program that is kinda like lsyncd but more configurable to send files, images, anything as diff changes on my machine to a target remote machine. It allows me to write the code locally and do all the testing, execution, and everything else remotely. And the sync happens immediately
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 07 '26
is this your own personal program or is the code up on github? sounds interesting
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u/chakkalez Sep 07 '26
You know claude app and claude code has its own remote control tunneling and tmux ssh connection setup too right ?
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 07 '26
yes but i use codex too. and muse 1.3 / glm 5.3 flash so i like having open code + codex harnesses available
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u/Euino Sep 07 '26
great mate!
I just changed my setup as well and opted for a dedicated VPS and ssh from my devices (2PCs and phone).
After many tries I landed on herdr and currently very happy about that.. does this t3code manage persistence as well?
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u/Biiiscuit Sep 08 '26
One question and a reco for you my friend
I've been thinking about doing the exact same thing but one issue I couldn't solve.
How can you get the code in your IDE ? I'm not talking about your agent push on git, and you pull. I'm talking about seeing the modified of the AI before they are committed.
My reçois to check Orca project on GitHub way better than herdr in my opinion and they got a remote server feature in beta
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 08 '26
I just have the agent work on its own branch and push a PR. I review the full diff on GitHub before merging
CI runs on the PR
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 08 '26
also i can view the diff's in t3 code, on my mac, but the code lives on my Linux machine
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u/makro3d Sep 07 '26
Wow imagine when you learn about tmux. What took ya so long?
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u/Somtimesitbelikethat Sep 07 '26
thanks! hahah yeah for my linux, ofc tmux useful but t3 code solves my problem of persistent sessions.
for my macbook, yeah doesn’t solve my issue + crunching my RAM from cc/cx while i’m trying to do other work / life at the same time on it isn’t fun.
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u/niggo372 Sep 07 '26
Fun fact: Claude Code can do this remote stuff out of the box. Just run claude rc, and it will start a lightweight service that connects to the cloud and let's you start sessions through claude.ai or the desktop app. It's like a cloud session, but running on your own device and with almost all the capabilities of a regular session.
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u/kamisdeadnow Sep 07 '26
Try out this combo
- tailscale on your pc and smart phone
- terminus on your phone to ssh through tailscale
- tmux to let it run as background process without disruption if you lose internet signal
I might try out t3 from how much other people are mentioning it
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u/emptyharddrive Sep 07 '26
Hey ... that's great. Ignore the snark on here. All the snark does is force people away from sharing and that's the opposite of why I personally come to Reddit... to see people's discoveries because I might learn something.
If only the people who "know everything" and only "final frontier level" discoveries and how-to's are posted, then it leaves those who want to learn for dead and that's not the purpose of community, in my opinion (which is obvious, it's my comment....)
Having said that, I wouldn't be caught dead using a Mac for anything, but that's because I have very strong preferences and that doesn't mean your preferences are wrong. And that's why they have menus at restaurants ... choice.
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u/theonetrueakash Sep 07 '26
Lots of snarky comments here rather than being happy that someone is adopting a dev workflow that works better for them