2016-12-05 13:55 GMT+01:00 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>:

On 12/5/16, mike.valk@gmail.com <mike.valk@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2016-12-05 11:55 GMT+01:00 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>:
> How about using a lighter/smaller laptop and a "mini" desktop as a server,
> SSH/VNC. Like an Intel NUC

nice idea... can't do it. remember, i would have to carry the mini
desktop as a server, plus its power supply, plus network cables, in my
backpack, setting it up at the factory, or at a client, or at a hotel,
or a supplier, every single time.

plus, openscad, which is heavy on the 3D OpenGL side, simply wouldn't
work over X11

1. Cables; Buy a beefier adapter and fit it with two ends, one for the laptop and one for the desktop. Might not work for Dell etc beacause of their 1-wire protocol [1]. Use wireless between the laptop and desktop. They're close together. Most Wifi cards can do AP and Client simultaneously sap laptop in dual mode and desktop in client. But bring a cable just in case...

2. Remte access; Don't do X11, do VNC or RDP. Or use a hdmi/dvi grabber. If you need X11 use SSH compression. Works wonders!. I'm used to narrow lines and old Unix systems and SSH compression saves the day. Most cpu's even have compression processors to do the heavy lifting.

It's a little more work to set up but more versatile and replaceable. Most 32GiB Laptops are huge, heavy and expensive and drain a lot of battery fast. I gather from your response CPU is not the issue RAM is. Those "Mobile workstations" have consuming but faster CPU's.

This setup allows you to run browsers/presentations on your laptop and your workflow on the desktop. Gaining extra RAM! Laptop+Deskop.

But do what you feel is best and give you the most productive environment.

This is bootstrapping the EOMA. You don't produce cars with cars. Those are produced with factories and trucks etc. This laptop is your factory.

To bad most software doesn't scale out and run on ARM ABI's. Then a cluster of EOMA's could do the trick ;-)

[1] http://hackaday.com/2014/03/03/hacking-dell-laptop-charger-identification/