5 ms·

The device discussion is really interesting on so many levels. Especially for non-phones and remote working. Let's say you live in a studio apartment and you h

by nickjj 5y ago

The device discussion is really interesting on so many levels. Especially for non-phones and remote working. Let's say you live in a studio apartment and you have your own personal workstation set up how you like it. That would be a desktop workstation, couple of monitors, adjustable standing desk, some chair that you like, internet, etc.. Now a company wants to hire you and they want you to use a company issued laptop. This becomes a serious physical burden on both yourself and your limited space. Using a laptop without external monitors is horrible posture but if you're in a studio apartment you might not have enough space to use a completely separate desk, chair, couple of monitors, keyboard, mouse, etc.. We'll ignore the money aspect of having 2 distinct set ups which in the grand scheme of things isn't too big of a deal. There's not too many reasonable options here. The company's policy might not allow you to bring your own device and even if they let you use your personal computer, allowing them to audit that or install some remote desktop sharing software that they have free reign over would be total madness. It's also not that painless to quickly switch around HDMI (or even worse DVI) monitor cables. I suppose you could rig some type of HUB that lets you flip a switch to control which computer your monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, microphone, etc. are active for. This way you can use your desk setup for both, but now you can't use them at the same time which has its own set of issues. There's also issues like wanting to copy files from your personal machine to the work machine. So you might think ok I'll just allow SSH connections locally but now you've linked both machines to a point where having separation is useless, or maybe you decide to use an external drive that you can swap between both. In either case the work machine has been tainted.

treesknees 5y ago
You don't need to be a single bachelor in a studio apartment to have this problem. I'd argue most people who worked from home due to lockdowns have ran into this. My home office, while adequate, wasn't exactly setup to be writing code and hosting meetings in for 8 hours a day. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy a desk and chair just for my work laptop... I ended up buying a nicer desk and monitor stand. As someone else pointed out, I purchased a KVM switch to flip my monitor between personal and work machines. After a year of this I've just moved to setting my personal laptop to the side for music/email/etc and stopped using the KVM switch. It really wasn't a big deal and I wouldn't call it all that interesting.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> I suppose you could rig some type of HUB that lets you flip a switch to control which computer your monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, microphone, etc. are active for This is the only sane option imo. I have been aggressively (during pandemic) switching to USB C and optimizing my desk setup. My personal macbook is usb c, my work macbook is usbc and my in-progress new gaming pc will be usb c. I have a single usbc hub with one cable that i will move from device to device at home and deal with that as the minimum difficulty solution.
treis 5y ago
It's not really that hard. They make KVM switches that will swap everything with one button. I've found those to be somewhat unreliable. Instead, I've got a USB switch that handles the keyboard + mouse. Monitors are always connected to both and I swap the input at the monitor. It mostly works fine except for the piece of crap Mac. Never know what arrangement my monitors will be when I boot up in the morning.
- amne 5y ago
  RDP for the win. I just RDP into the work laptop from my rig. Done.
  - treis 5y ago
    If you have a tutorial on how to do that to a Mac from Linux I'd be eternally grateful.
    - 10000truths 5y ago
      You can use VNC to do the same. MacOS screen sharing is basically just a built-in VNC server.
      - beebeepka 5y ago
        Have we reached a point where vnc is usable for something other than short support sessions?
        sgerenser 5y ago
        I used to RDP into my work laptop (wired gigabit Ethernet in the same room) from my 5K iMac and it worked great. I’m pretty sure VNC is going to be a much worse experience but maybe it’s improved since I last tried it a few years ago.
      - treis 5y ago
        If you have a tutorial on how to do that to a Mac from Linux I'd be eternally grateful.
EamonnMR 5y ago
You can get a switch that lets you select between HDMI signals, and quick-disconnect magnetic USB cables, that's how I deal with this problem. Realistically I don't switch it more than once a day; during work hours I don't need my personal machine and away from work hours I (generally) don't need my work machine.
jareklupinski 5y ago
I plugged my company laptop into my LAN, closed the lid, and tucked it near my router so I can use it as a jumpbox into the corp network to do my "actual work" from my battle-station while everything looks like it's coming from the laptop. I also got IT to buy me a tablet for Slack/GMeet/whatever else doesn't work over ssh, and hide that away in a drawer during non-work hours. When they asked why I couldnt use my smartphone, I told them I have a BlackBerry and wouldn't mind them paying for a new phone :^)
KronisLV 5y ago
Why not just use something like VNC/RDP in your local network? That way you can use your private device for viewing videos and browsing the web in the background, while your device's screen(s) are visible as a window that you can switch to do work. KVM switches are often too expensive in comparison to some software.
dhd415 5y ago
I have essentially this setup -- A decently powerful Win10 machine connected to three large monitors and I connect via X11 over wired gigabit Ethernet to my Linux work machine using Mobaxterm in Win10. It's the best of all worlds -- personal and work machines are completely separate, work apps show up as individual windows on my desktop machine, pure Linux dev environment that matches the prod environment, and no messing around with multi-monitor HiDPI setups in Linux when it "just works" in Windows.
- nickjj 5y ago
  That sounds like a good set up. I've used Mobaxterm (now VcXsrv) to run graphical apps inside of WSL but that would totally work with a separate Linux machine too. The user experience was really good. Google is hinting that this should be doable even if you want to forward apps from macOS to your main Windows box. Only downside is the taint factor is still there too since it's SSH'ing from your personal box into your work box.

by nickjj 5y ago

treesknees 5y ago

You don't need to be a single bachelor in a studio apartment to have this problem. I'd argue most people who worked from home due to lockdowns have ran into this. My home office, while adequate, wasn't exactly setup to be writing code and hosting meetings in for 8 hours a day. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy a desk and chair just for my work laptop... I ended up buying a nicer desk and monitor stand. As someone else pointed out, I purchased a KVM switch to flip my monitor between personal and work machines. After a year of this I've just moved to setting my personal laptop to the side for music/email/etc and stopped using the KVM switch. It really wasn't a big deal and I wouldn't call it all that interesting.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> I suppose you could rig some type of HUB that lets you flip a switch to control which computer your monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, microphone, etc. are active for This is the only sane option imo. I have been aggressively (during pandemic) switching to USB C and optimizing my desk setup. My personal macbook is usb c, my work macbook is usbc and my in-progress new gaming pc will be usb c. I have a single usbc hub with one cable that i will move from device to device at home and deal with that as the minimum difficulty solution.

treis 5y ago

It's not really that hard. They make KVM switches that will swap everything with one button. I've found those to be somewhat unreliable. Instead, I've got a USB switch that handles the keyboard + mouse. Monitors are always connected to both and I swap the input at the monitor. It mostly works fine except for the piece of crap Mac. Never know what arrangement my monitors will be when I boot up in the morning.

amne 5y ago
RDP for the win. I just RDP into the work laptop from my rig. Done.
- treis 5y ago
  If you have a tutorial on how to do that to a Mac from Linux I'd be eternally grateful.
  - 10000truths 5y ago
    You can use VNC to do the same. MacOS screen sharing is basically just a built-in VNC server.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      Have we reached a point where vnc is usable for something other than short support sessions?
      - sgerenser 5y ago
        I used to RDP into my work laptop (wired gigabit Ethernet in the same room) from my 5K iMac and it worked great. I’m pretty sure VNC is going to be a much worse experience but maybe it’s improved since I last tried it a few years ago.
    - treis 5y ago
      If you have a tutorial on how to do that to a Mac from Linux I'd be eternally grateful.

EamonnMR 5y ago

You can get a switch that lets you select between HDMI signals, and quick-disconnect magnetic USB cables, that's how I deal with this problem. Realistically I don't switch it more than once a day; during work hours I don't need my personal machine and away from work hours I (generally) don't need my work machine.

jareklupinski 5y ago

I plugged my company laptop into my LAN, closed the lid, and tucked it near my router so I can use it as a jumpbox into the corp network to do my "actual work" from my battle-station while everything looks like it's coming from the laptop. I also got IT to buy me a tablet for Slack/GMeet/whatever else doesn't work over ssh, and hide that away in a drawer during non-work hours. When they asked why I couldnt use my smartphone, I told them I have a BlackBerry and wouldn't mind them paying for a new phone :^)

KronisLV 5y ago

Why not just use something like VNC/RDP in your local network? That way you can use your private device for viewing videos and browsing the web in the background, while your device's screen(s) are visible as a window that you can switch to do work. KVM switches are often too expensive in comparison to some software.

dhd415 5y ago

I have essentially this setup -- A decently powerful Win10 machine connected to three large monitors and I connect via X11 over wired gigabit Ethernet to my Linux work machine using Mobaxterm in Win10. It's the best of all worlds -- personal and work machines are completely separate, work apps show up as individual windows on my desktop machine, pure Linux dev environment that matches the prod environment, and no messing around with multi-monitor HiDPI setups in Linux when it "just works" in Windows.

nickjj 5y ago
That sounds like a good set up. I've used Mobaxterm (now VcXsrv) to run graphical apps inside of WSL but that would totally work with a separate Linux machine too. The user experience was really good. Google is hinting that this should be doable even if you want to forward apps from macOS to your main Windows box. Only downside is the taint factor is still there too since it's SSH'ing from your personal box into your work box.