I love how I can customize my PC/VPS (Linux), and I feel truly at home. I hate smartphones (iPhone and Android). I hate it how limited I am in configuring them, and it’s a PITA to make sure it all syncs with my main computer.
Why isn’t it much more common to just use our phones as little windows/gateways to our actual computers? Using something like VCN? Internet speeds should be fast enough?
We could even build a little interface that makes it easier to navigate?
For a long time I ssh’d into my vps to manage tasks and notes in emacs and even play dwarf fortress.
With utilities like screen you can rejoin sessions anywhere, etc.
Have you tried this?
Never tried to get a GUI running like this.
Yes, I also did that for some time yes. Maybe I should start doing that again. Good tip to use screen for this.
This is basically why people self host. Then your phone is really just a client to all your services.
I used to use RDP from Android to my Windows 10 pc constantly. Since switching to Debian, I haven’t gotten around to getting that working again. (Debians out of the box RDP solution gives me a black screen on the remote device)
Instead I’ve been using ssh a ton with JuiceSSH for a terminal. X-Plore for GUI managing files between local(android), ssh, gdrive, dropbox, and many more locations all in two tabs you can swap between and copy/paste/move files as if it’s all one big file system.
Finally I use Folder Sync to keep all of the userdata files on my phone backed up to a folder on my server via SSH. Images are synced immediately on creation, and everything else is backed up on a schedule.
(my phone’s always connected to a private VPN keeping it within my LAN and able to reach things like my SSH server, without exposing them to WAN)
The only thing I really miss having RDP for is the occasional website that refuses to play with a mobile browser. Hotmail/Outlook (I know, I should really change to someone not trash for email) for example will not let you edit inbox rules via a mobile browser or their mobile app. (even with ‘request desktop site’ enabled). You have to use an actual desktop browser for that. :(
Otherwise I do pretty much everything from mobile.
Finally I use Folder Sync to keep all of the userdata files on my phone backed up to a folder on my server via SSH. Images are synced immediately on creation, and everything else is backed up on a schedule.
On a similar tangent, I use Syncthing-Fork on my phone to sync my userdata between my phone, desktop, laptop and VPS.
I use the untrusted device feature to encrypt my data with an additional password, which I entered on my phone, desktop, and laptop, but not on the VPS. That way I have an encrypted copy of my userdata that I securely store on my VPS for an extra layer of protection in case of a security breach.
That’s a fair solution.
I’ve just got remote devices syncing to my local server. From there Borg handles encrypted historical backups of that server which can be sent offline/offsite.
I like borg because of its insane de-duplication and compression algorithms. I’ve currently got ~480GB of data being backed up, with 16 historical copies going back 6 months: that entire archive takes up 303GB of space currently. Without the de-duplication and compression that’s 7.76TB of data.
We‘re actually a couple steps ahead and building linux for phones. PostmarketOS is becoming more and more viable every day. Many people are helping to port it to new devices. If you have an old phone or can get your hands on one, you might enjoy it. Dont expect high polish or „I just want to use it and be done with it“ though because thats not how it works.
That’s very cool. How does that compare to https://e.foundation/e-os/ ? (That’s what I’m currently running on my phone).
Moonlight / sunshine give you a good quality desktop anywhere on any device including your phones.
