Re: OT: Questions about (buying and) using a laptop docking station
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 12:22:44 +0000 (GMT)
"G.W. Haywood" <debian-bugs@jubileegroup.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2020, rhkramer wrote:
>
> > (Aside: I need to get a docking station with a VGA output as I
> > "run" the laptop through a KVM switch and one of the computers
> > connected to it has no HDMI output, and the KVM switch itself has
> > no HDMI input.)
> >
> > I get the idea (or I am jumping to the conclusion?) that there
> > is some hardware in the docking station (like graphics and audio
> > chips) which I'm assuming would need to be supported by Buster.
> >
> > Is that correct?
> >
> > Any recommendations for a suitable docking station?
>
> If I understand your use case I shouldn't have thought it's necessary
> to buy any kind of docking station - and indeed there's no need to use
> a KVM switch either.
>
> Look into using remote X sessions. For example I'm running X on this
> Raspberry Pi on my desk. The CPU in the Pi is rather feeble compared
> to the i7 in one of my laptops, and so I use the laptop for some heavy
> processing but most of the time I don't need it. I keep it in another
> building on the site, where I sometimes do need it. The buildings are
> all connected via Ethernet. The laptop permits the Pi to connect to
> its X display. Using 'xvncviewer' running on the Pi, a window on the
> screen connected to the Pi shows the display on the laptop screen, and
> xvncviewer also connects the keyboard and pointing device as well. So
> I can drive the laptop from my desk just like the laptop is on my
> desk. Of course you'd probably do things a bit differently but the
> principles are similar. There are several ways of doing it, and there
> are several viewers like xvncviewer - I just happen to use that one
> because I'm used to using it.
>
It can actually be simpler than that: you can directly run applications
on the remote machine using X forwarding, and a window will pop up on
your client machine, no need for a viewer. In the past, using Cygwin,
I've had Linux application windows open on a Windows client, again no
explicit viewer involved, just X forwarded over ssh, in this case using
PuTTY. Windows 10 now (finally) has a native ssh client.
--
Joe
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