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I'm supporting a team of ~10 developers. Each developer machine is running Ubuntu 16.04.1 and each developer has their own desktop tower. This setup works well but locks that developer to their desk. What I'd like to do is place all their development towers in a server room somewhere, and provide them laptops as thin clients to use to connect to their server room tower. Ideally, all desks would have two screens, appropriate connectors, and devs can walk up to any desk, plug in, and {RDP/VNC/NX/SSH} to their tower and have a multi-monitor thin client setup.

I've tried x2go but it's xinerama configuration is not working for me (and, it'd seem, others online) so I'm unable to get the type of setup I'd like. I've since been reading about FreeRDP and LTSP but with so many choices, and non-trivial setup/compiling I wanted to get some other opinions before diving too far in to this.

Unless I'm misguided in my attempt to forward X to the thin clients entirely and there is another, better solution I have not considered. I can imagine scenarios in which the devs do 95% of their work on their local laptops and then we just use their current towers as build servers or something else.

Also, for what it's worth, my personal setup includes a more powerful laptop than the ones I'm considering for the devs, but this way I'm able to run 2 monitors + laptop screen on a Win 10 host w/ a Ubuntu VM. I can develop, build, and test code all from my laptop. Obviously I don't want their towers to be useless so I was considering the thin client route but again, please point me in the right direction if I'm barking up the wrong tree. Thanks!

DTI-Matt
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    Have you considered the performance ramifications of doing this? I know the developers I work with would revolt if they had to put up with a setup such as this, as would I. – EEAA May 12 '17 at 19:30
  • If all you need is a remote build server for them to use, then forget about X. Just have them ssh into a headless server and do whatever they need to do. – EEAA May 12 '17 at 19:31
  • @EEAA yes this was my concern too. I've floated the idea to them but we've yet to see how it performs on our LAN. We already have build servers/pipelines, but I wanted the devs to be nomadic and be able to sit at different desks each day. Can you suggest other solutions? – DTI-Matt May 12 '17 at 19:40
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    1) procure laptops that can drive multiple monitors 2) keep identical dual-monitor setups at each desk. – EEAA May 12 '17 at 19:41
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    Do the devs want to be nomadic? – ceejayoz May 12 '17 at 23:43

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