Leaving arm, I was surprised to discover that many software companies don’t just give you access to some sort of virtual machine somewhere, or a shared desktop on an hpc cluster for you to work on.

Emmanuel talks about his experience moving from google to twitter as well:

https://ma.nu/blog/from-google-to-twitter

My other computer is not a data center: maybe paradoxically (given the previous item), it is very common for Google engineers to use a big powerful machine “in the cloud” (or in an office) and to drive it remotely using something lighter, that can be used from anywhere with good internet (I started doing that around 2008).

It’s pretty nice working this way - everyone used the same OS (linux) and the software that you needed was typically already installed. This means that any new employees also didn’t take that much time to ramp up on the tooling as well (besides getting access).

Tooling for remote workstations

• vnc
• turbovnc
• RDP
• FreeRDP
• xrdp
• x2go
• nomachine
• exceed
• parsec
• moonlight (with sunshine)
• teridici
• fastx
• steam remote play
• things like teamviewer, etc.

Other comments

• x2go is a little slower than nomachine
• what other options are there?
  • https://netflixtechblog.com/remote-workstations-for-the-discerning-artists-8155a8fbd190
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834286
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/ts1495/alternatives_to_nomachine_and_x2go_for_remote/
  • https://github.com/loki-47-6F-64/sunshine