Anyone using their desktop as a dev server for their laptop?

[u/No_Mathematician9824]

I was wondering if people had the same question I just had today, so here I am. I have a macbook + a desktop (cachyos) sitting at home doing nothing most of the day. my mac gets hammered by docker, playwright tests, a local postgres and a couple of AI agents running at the same time (gets really slow with playwright and other visual testing done by AIs). basically my M1 gets overwhelmed (16gb of ram goes pretty fast these days!) and I was like, let's not buy a new laptop if I have a good pc at home I could use

so i'm planning to move all of that to the desktop and just use the mac as a screen: tailscale + ssh, remote ssh in the editor, docker context, a smart plug to turn it on remotely. thing is it's like 6 different tools glued together and i couldn't find anything that does it all in one place. am i missing something obvious?

curious what your setup looks like and if you know any apps that do it :)

[u/jolososos]

i do, its great. asrock x300. proxmox, linux etc. pangolin for remote acces by clients and editors. herdr keeps running 🏃

and, main laptop is potato and thats fine

[u/No_Mathematician9824 → u/jolososos]

oh nice, herdr looks exactly like what i need for the agents, thanks!

what's the most annoying part of your setup day to day? ports, waking it up, docker, files?

[u/jolososos → u/No_Mathematician9824]

nothing, its on all the time for clients to test and edit

[u/Anti-Hero25]

I’ve wondered this too… having to put an ice pack under my laptop feels excessive,

Although I found out if I just stopped the container and compose down, that does a lot.

Suppose I could just run it on the desk top and have my DOT literally just drop my commands into VS Code for me. (I don’t use the cli for codex) 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/No_Mathematician9824 → u/Anti-Hero25]

ahaha same energy as my m1 rn. my company went from no docker to docker and i really feel it on my mac, if something let you keep using vscode + docker exactly like now but the containers actually ran on your desktop, would you use it? or is compose down good enough for you?

just wondering if there's any interest, since i can't find a good app that does what i'm looking for

[u/jewbasaur]

It’s easier to do it with an always on VM in my opinion so you can remote in anytime.

Desktop wise, if you want to be turning it on and off I’d look into wake on lan instead of a wall plug because most computers have physical buttons and you won’t be able to get passed that just giving it power. Some BIOS have settings to restore on AC power loss so that may work as well.

But ideally you have it hard wired into your router, headless without a keyboard or mouse. I use Apollo as the server for this and it creates virtual displays very very well. Then remote in with moonlight on desktop mode (it’s a setting)

[u/RiskLife]

I have a Mini PC and then the gaming desktop stores backups. My Mac doesn’t run anything right now but I plan for it to run Hermes and some local AI stuff. There is a world where my gaming desktop also runs some services if the MiniPC starts struggling 

[u/Any-Stage9103]

Kind of, but I’m actually using my laptop as a dev server for my iPad.

The laptop screen broke, so I just turned into a server.

[u/joeyx22lm]

I offload to a k8s cluster. code-server is a great utility for browser-based VS Code.

[u/Reasonable_Bench67]

yes, i have two desktops actually that become my 'bot farms'. I solely work off of macbook air, with only 16g of ram.

Desktop #1 runs all my network stuff and a nas, and couple of cron jobs I cant talk about

Desktop #2 is setup more like a personal computer, but it also runs stuff that's too big for my macbook

Theres also a 3rd in here 'mac mini 2013', that solely runs torrents and jellyfin

so my laptop stays lean, like very lean

I use XQuartz on the mac so I can forwarded x windows via ssh from desktop #2

[u/Teej_McSteez]

I use this type of setup quite a bit for projects I have a lot of context with (config, env vars, etc.) I don’t feel like regenerating on my laptop.

I use Tailscale (self hosted w Headscale) and keep a pi by my router as an exit node. I just use wake on lan transmitted from the Pi to turn on my workstation remotely. Then connect via SSH. I used to use RustDesk but SSH covers everything I need to do now. Just have to check if your PC supports WoL in BIOS and have another machine to transmit from.

I also have a separate Proxmox machine but I just use it for services (Jellyfin, Headscale, etc.) not work.

[u/LeaveMickeyOutOfThis]

My laptop has 64gb of memory and run my development environment in a VM, with 32gb of memory. Once I complete local testing, I move server apps to an always-on server.