Managing Multiple Workstations

Lainons with many active (non-server) computers, how do you orchestrate them all? Do you specialize each computer, or keep them to a standard? My state of the workstation has almost no order: - Laptop daily driver with Debian for dev work, web, gaming - Desktop PC, dual-booted with Debian for dev work and Windows for gaming. In practice, I only boot up Windows - Work laptop lent by company, kept separate from everything else - Spare surplus laptops, incl. a thinkpad with a fresh OS install that slows down when playing Youtube. Raspberry pi 4 I won at a context. No idea what to do with these.

>>64515 >desktop pc for gaming on windows >beautiful laptop pc for dev work on fedora

>>64515 I have 3 PCs plus a Raspberry Pi. I don't currently have any use for my old PC. I guess it's good to have a backup PC and I can snatch the old GPU from it if my new GPU breaks. My new desktop is the computer that I use daily. I dual-boot Botnet 10 (only for gaming) and GNU/Linux (for everything else and even some light gaming, mainly OpenMW, GZDoom and eduke32). I used to use Raspberry Pi for testing stuff but nowadays I usually just use a VM instead. VM snapshots are a great feature.

That RasPi4 could be used to do host-based adblock, look up PiHole. I personally have 3 devices I use on a daily basis that are non-server: Main PC running Artix Linux for gaming and web research. Laptop running Artix Linux for messing around with script making. Getting pretty good at making RSS feed generators. Pixel 5a running LineageOS for music, other stuff.

Yes, and my current setup is as follows: Two main laptops, one Arch, one Windows One main desktop with a beefy GPU for AI and VR Lots of secondary laptops dedicated to different side projects that I only work on with that laptop. I have one for embedded stuff, one for security stuff, one for offline crypto signing, etc. With decent enough laptops for side projects being like $400, I often buy one just for a new side project. It's easier to stay focused on whatever project if I have a dedicated laptop for it. Plus I don't lose all my work if/when I get distracted for a couple years and then come back to it. If I used just one computer I uninstall or wipe over a bunch of embedded engineering software that I barely ever use and then forget how I configured all of it, what I was using, why, etc. But since I have a dedicated computer for that, I can drop it for a year and then come back right where I left off. If you could have a dedicated room in your house for every hobby or side project, that would be cool right? Well, mansions are expensive, but used laptops aren't.

>>64515 Laptop running autistic version of Gentoo Linux, I use it for almost everything Moderately powerful desktop computer that I use to play video games, it runs Windows 10 that I have tried as I might to debloat and deglow. Ah yes, and I also have a Pentium III desktop running Windows XP. It mostly just sits on my desk for nostalgic/aesthetic purposes.

I have a desktop and a laptop. Any important files just get stored on my server anyways so I can use either one.

I use a Thinkpad for daily stuff, a gaming PC for gaming, and a x86 mini PC plugged into my TV for streaming fuarrrkTube (with browser extensions), using ani-cli, and playing local media with an external hard drive. If you're wondering how I work this I have a wireless keyboard with a built in trackpad so I am not losing my mouse all the time. While it's leagues above using a game console or the internet features on my TV it's about time to upgrade the mini PC.

>>64515 >personal laptop with fedora (coding, vms, etc.) >desktop with mint (mostly gaming) >work laptop with ubuntu i mostly use github, email and storage off as server. Basically anything i want to do can be carried over to a new device but in practice I like to segmentate devices based on purpose

I have way too many PCs. My gaming rig running windows, music production rig running ubuntu, uni/work laptop running arch, workbench thinkpad running artix, media PC running fedora. All running different specilaized software/hardware, especially important for the audio workstation since JACK regularly fuarrrks everything up and having to redo only the music software saves time. I have a rsync script to sync the individual computers with my NAS. The NAS is just a dell office soykafbox with the cheapest ali sata card and like 6 different used hard drives running poorly configured ZFS - I'm still not sure if I actually have drive redundancy properly set up. My window manager config files are in a git repo with a setup.sh - BSPWM config is literally a shell script, just run a check on your machines hostname and enable/disable multimonitor stuff for example. I really hate how much power all the monitors draw though. Old LCDs often draw over 50W constantly with at least 2 per box I try to have only one machine running at most. Does anyone have ideas on how to improve this? Would externally dimming the backlight and installing a higher efficiency PSU actually make a difference? Or do I have to replace the CCFL lamps with cheap LED strips, if that's even possible?

>>64515 All my computers (desktop, laptop, servers, VMs) run various versions of Debian and share a lot of elements in their setup. To keep their configs in sync, I use a single Puppet configuration for everything, with conditional statements wherever I want the machines to be configured differently. I rarely install packages or edit config files manually anymore. I just edit the Puppet config, commit, and apply. Then when I switch computers, I just run a keybinding to pull, rebase, and apply the config. It's very convenient. If I want, I can install a minimal version of Debian somewhere, copy over and apply the config, and go for a coffee. When I return, the computer will be set up exactly how I want, with all the appropriate software and dotfiles.