Project: Access your powerful GNU/Linux desktop from whereever you may be

First up: I prefer using Linux/KDE for reasons of usability and the whole tool box I get. On the other hand, my experience with using Linux in Windows work environments is that colleagues notice, superiors worry, and admins — usually Windows guys — burst into plain fear because of the potential the GNU tool box provides you with. Mentioning to alternatively bring in your own laptop usually worsens the situation, so I don’t bother on this anymore.

As I am used to use GNU software, when being in a Windows environment, very often I realize that the task at hand could be done far easier by using some GNU tool I know than by the toy tools a plain Windows and plain MS Office supply you with. The available share- and freeware doesn’t really complement that, and often they demand admin access for installation, which a common employee usually does not have. So, my intend is to get a GNU/Linux environment at hand whereever I am deployed to.

In a less dense environment, I enjoyed using the Knoppix live CD and the Damn Small mini Linux which fits on a very small USB memory stick. As my home office Linux differs from what these systems provide, however, none of them really gives me the tools I want. However, if you’ve got nothing else at hand, they might serve you well. But the idea for this here project is to make my home office environment accessible to whereever I may be.

Options.

The most rudimentary setup would be to define my home office box as a server and use some other tool as some kind of client. That one client shall be usable whereever I am, including the firewalled garden of the employees’ environment as well as the sniffing network of some customer of mine as well as any internet café I’ll might be going to.

I prefer to get this one rudimentary setup implemented first, so I can step forward once I am done with that. An extension of using my actual home office box, in the future, might be to shift to some virtual host, originally being intended as a web server — but why not use it as a desktop environment alternatively? I also would like to see whether I could put the whole environment onto some cloud computing installation, like e.g. Amazon’s EC2.

Tools at hand.

For the server, I see my current home office box. This one is a dedicated Debian Stable. For some reason, it has its own firewall despite it’s behind the firewall of the internet router. — This internet router is the next part of my tool set: It offers to keep a DynDNS setup up to date and allows to accept routes on port A and route them to some other port B on my Linux box. Also, I’ve got a flatrate DSL connection with at least 128 kbit upstream, similar on the client side.

For the client, I intend to use the Damn Small Linux, as its easy to shoulder by an underpowered Windows (which office Windowses seem to be by default) and you can even download Damn Small Linux just in a few moments, then run it from the downloaded place. Which can even be an internet café.

The intended setup.

At time of this posting, I am not yet there to have a running and demonstrable environment. However, what I have in mind is to tunnel to my home office box by using SSH, then launch applications there, operate them by using Damn Small on the client side.

In case you never used Damn Small Linux (DSL) yet: DSL is a 50 MB tiny Linux you download and put someplace, e.g. onto a USB memory stick or just straight onto the box you are using. You extract it, then launch it by some provided batch file. That, in turn causes a machine emulator to start, inside which the actual linux will run. Visibly, that will be just a window amongst all the others on the Windows box. Damn Small Linux provides you with some basic desktop, wallpaper, desktop icons to click, and some core applications. Despite that it’s yet more powerful than an original Windows without any applications installed. Of course, DSL features an SSH client, by which you can tunnel X applications (i.e. graphical desktop applications).

Damn Small Linux announces its presence by its wallpaper and some machine [emulation] related desktop features. To get Damn Small seamlessly fit into the Windows environment, I need to make it look like a Windows or at least turn off all those visibles which tell a casual bystander that that is not a Windows/Windows application running there. And might make them nosy..alert.

Intended approach.

I intend to set up DynDNS and the internet router first, then figure out a way to hide I am using Linux on the client side. I intend to keep you posted on my progress. For you the easiest way to stay posted might be to subscribe my RSS feed, hence I just linked that one here.