The State of Remote Desktops?

frenchgates writes "It became clear to me (when my main machine had to be sent away for repairs for a week) that it's high time to finally divorce myself from any particular computer by using data and software accessible from any internet connected computer as much as possible. I'm talking Visual IDEs, productivity apps, powerful, easy to use email client, etc, all presented to me consistently from computer to computer on my remote virtual desktop. Is anyone seriously trying this? What are the best practices and best applications? What are the biggest shortcomings? What if I limit my demand to "accessible from any internet connected Windows machine with Java installed?" Are there good web sites devoted to this noble goal?"

Comments

Start by divorcing yourself from M$...

[CodeShark]

Then build and learn the rest. You can't divorce yourself from a particular computer if you are using a Microsoft Windows operating system later than 3.11, which in essence means no Windows OS at all is worth keeping. Reason? you can't depend on being machine independent because Microsoft seems to think that they can do whatever they want in the background of the apps without informing you of the details.

Start by getting a new one or converting your current machine to a *nix, i.e., one of the BSDs or Linux.

Second, the latest build of Mozilla for your platform, including updated JRE and JVMs.

Not 100% necessary, but you probably want a web domain / server separate from your workstation, with the appropriate security settings to make sure that what's yours stays yours, i.e., you don't get hacked. (separates the data from the programs which use it).

Once you have clean setups for all of the above, the last remaining tasks are basically developing user smarts that you will use for the life of your system: only install programs, etc. that you trust and that have a good reputation for interoperability. Maintain a good backup strategy. Keep up with security patches. All of which you should be doing anyway.

The difference is, on the *nix side, you will end up knowing how things can get mucked and prevent it or at least know how to recover.

Still haven't figured it out

[Pussy Is Money]

Jezus holy christ. We were having this whole Internet thing going on, and you still haven't figured it out. Sad.