Portable workspace, what is the best solution?
Portable workspace, what is the best solution?
Here's the basics of my set up for what I can bring around:
- A Crucial 1TB M.2 Drive
- A M.2 Drive Enclosure that has USB 3.1 Gen 2 output So with these together are desktop performance in a small thing. It is not a flash drive that just gets ruined in like 3 months of constant use.
And with these, I use a Ventoy set up called Medicat. I love it, and there's no issue with it for me, besides that Medicat/Microsoft requires NTFS for Windows stuff. Aside from standard NTFS bullshit, it's wonderful.
Since I have so much space, I had the idea of storing a Linux set up for on the go use on any laptop/computer without needing to sign into 10 websites for one time use. Here's my two methods of how to do it:
- Make a persistent data block for Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. and make a Live ISO point to it, then boot from Ventoy into the ISO, which then handles mounting the "drive".
- Clear a space on the drive, install a distro like Fedora/Debian and encrypt it, allowing me to just run
apt upgradeand move on like a normal PC.
Here's the upsides and downsides to both that I can see, just thinking about it.
Persistence:
- ✅ Don't need to fuck with partitions of NTFS, last time I tried to shrink the drive NTFS had a breakdown and I couldn't fix it.
- ✅ Can expand the persistence as time goes on
- ❌ NTFS constantly has issues with me, where I can cleanly eject the drive but I need to run
ntfsfixto make it work again, and I don't know when that will happen in the future. - ❓ Not sure how it will go with Arch Linux, but that might be a bad choice for a drive I boot into for fun/infrequently.
Partition and full install:
- ✅ Easier to just get going, point an ISO to install there and good to go.
- ✅ Easier to upgrade to new packages/editions, instead of downloading new ISOs and pointing it each time. I'm unsure if it would let me use a .dat file from Fedora 36 for Fedora 40, for example.
- ✅ I can encrypt it so I don't need to worry about people nabbing it and messing with personal files.
- ✅ I can use something like ext4 or btrfs, so I don't need to rely on NTFS.
- ❌ Trying to resize NTFS was really fucky, and felt like I was breaking something. I did break it, and had to reinstall Medicat/Ventoy.
- ❓ I'm unsure of how to boot from it and keep Medicat/Ventoy as the main option. Maybe create a file on Ventoy to boot the distro? Maybe it varies from BIOS to BIOS?
Wanting to hear the thoughts from people smarter than me, maybe have done this before. I just want to make it clear It's not a USB flash drive, this won't break randomly from one too many R/Ws.
I’ve done this sort of thing before but the fundamental problem is people typically don’t just let you boot your OS on their machine.
Right, this is for my friends that I have consent/approval from. I also don't punch random bank info in public, and rarely do it on their computers.
It's still a bad idea. If they have some really nasty malware installed it could rootkit your device, and vice versa - and you never really know. Just build a small portable computer (eg. Raspberry pi, NUC, etc) and use their KB/mouse/display.
Other peeps are saying just connect to a remote desktop you have hosted somewhere using your friend's PC - don't do that, you can't trust their software/hardware.
I don't like messing with people's computers settings. So any kind of bootable media is a no go for me.
I personally just go with remote access to an always on system at my house. All I need is a web browser and Internet access and I am good.
If your dead set on some portable stick of some kind. Why not just go with a small portable computer stick? You can just plug into an existing monitor keyboard and mouse and your on your own private system.
Or another option less Linux is a Samsung smartphone. You can get HDMI adapters that will give you a full desktop experience using the phone. I played with it a handful of times and it seems to work.
Bring your own portable computer.
Are you committed to using a physical external drive?
I personally came to the solution for a portable workspace by setting up a Guacamole server, Guacamole is a HTML5 based remote desktop interface. I personally have a proxmox server and have Guac hooked into various VMs so I can access anything from any browser on any HTML5 capable device.
It's actually really nice for even at home use, I have a couple Windows VMs each setup for specific use cases, like one of them is setup as my Visual Studio development workspace or switch to my totally-not-macos-that-would-be-a-eula-violation VM for not-mac stuff lol
I use proxmox, but Guac handles quite a few different remote desktop protocols, so you could hook it into an always running desktop/laptop or something if you want to keep things a little simpler
But that might be a little more involved than you were thinking with your original idea lol
That's way more work that I'm thinking of, plus my home internet isn't good enough for any outside server use, and I don't have the cash for a server hosted somewhere. Thank you however!
You might be surprised how little bandwidth you need. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/rdp-bandwidth
I just created a Docker container based off Ubuntu with Gnome and NoVNC.
Might be harder in modern computers, with secureboot and all...
You can boot from USB with UEFI, that's not a showstopper. Unless I'm missing something?
You can, if the secureboot doesn't stop you.
Of course you can disable the secureboot, assuming you have control of the firmware setting.
If you decide to go with the full install, the arch wiki has some good tips: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_on_a_removable_medium
Make a persistent data block for Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. and make a Live ISO point to it, then boot from Ventoy into the ISO, which then handles mounting the "drive".
You don't need a live ISO or a separate persistent data block. The best way is to just create a single VHD/VDI for your Linux distro of choice and boot it with Ventoy. You can even have it encrypted using LUKS.