Ask HN: A way to utilize all my machines?

by pvinis on 4/25/2022, 4:13 PM with 6 comments

I have this idea, that maybe exists as a product, or it doesn't. If it does, please point me to it. If it doesn't, please feel free to make it a product, and maybe just give me a free copy or a thanks in the credits. Here we go.

I have two MacBooks one windows laptop, and one windows machine.

I usually use one of the MacBooks as the main machine, but everyday it's reaching it's limits with memory and whatever else.

I would love to, say, offload all the random apps to the other MacBook, so say slack and messenger and WhatsApp and my calendar run on the other MacBook, but they show up on my main machine as if I'm remote-desktop-ing just on that window/app. Kinda like what Parallels (I think) can do with this funky feature where it shows the guest windows on the host desktop.

That would keep my main machine slightly more free of that "baggage".

I could ask for more with windows, gaming and now, but let's keep it simple.

Does this exist?

Can I use some kind of ssh, remote-desktop, docker, other things I don't even know the names of, to do this? To have another machine run an app, and have it show up as if it's running on my main machine? I don't mind if the graphics rendering is happening on the main machine or on the other machine and it's just streamed in. I just want the resources to be used from that other machine.

  • by criticas on 4/25/2022, 4:29 PM

    You may wish to look into Synergy (https://symless.com/synergy/features). It allows you to use a single keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. Each computer retains its' own displays, so it may not meet your needs. When I used it I had Windows and Linux desktops side by side, and focus followed the mouse across the displays.

  • by disadvantage on 4/25/2022, 6:15 PM

    You could always use virtual machines and compartment your computing into different buckets. Get some beefy laptop with good specs and you can assign however much RAM you want to each VM. 2048MB should be sufficient for each machine.

    Personally though, before using VMs I thought I would be super productive and switch between VMs, but over time I realized having only one VM open at a time was enough, including the host/hypervisor.

  • by PaulHoule on 4/25/2022, 4:25 PM

    So you want something like running an application remote on X Windows or like RDP but just for one Window?