Bdtyktl

Currently i am running ubuntu on an notebook for work while i still have a windows desktop pc with a much more powerful cpu and gpu. I need the notebook as a portable working station but i wondered if it would be possible to use the more powerful hardware of the desktop pc while i am at home.

For different reasons i want to avoid installing linux on the desktop pc and though about connecting the internal notebook ssd (with linux on it) to the desktop pc and the boot from that ssd on the desktop pc.

Is it somehow possible to expose the internal notebook ssd externally via, for example, usb or ethernet?

I dont mind any longer startup time. From my understanding ubuntu should be able to load most of the necessary programs/files into the ram once and then have fast access to them.

Edit: To clarify my problem: I want to connect my internal notebook ssd to my desktop pc while the notebook is not running (or, if neccessary, running something to enable me to do this) and then boot from this ssd on my desktop pc.

Basically the same as if i would physically open my notebook and take out the harddrive to connect it to the other pc, just without opening it.

This is sort-of possible, but probably not worth the effort as you are simply going to cgange one bottleneck for another with added complexity, and eliminating the bottleneck will be way more expensive then upgrading other hardware.

You can share a harddrive or ssd any number of ways, including- at the easy end - SAMBA (Windiws filesharing), then NFS (Unix filesharing) or more powerful and complete but harder, sharing block devices/pseudo block devices using iSCSI.

The issue is that gigabit ethernet will top out at about 125megabytes - about the speed if a hard drive. Likewise, ethernet will add latency (possibly not as much as a fragmented hdd, but a significant amount).

Upgrading past gigabit ethernet is likely more expensive then getting an SSD, and may not be possible.on the laptop. Also, none of this will mske use if the additionsl mrmory ir CPU on the remote.

I do note an alternative for processor heavy but graphics light jobs - use something like rdesktop or VNC to remotely use the more powerful device and turn your slower device intI, in effect, a dumb terminal.

The problem is that the hard drive is not exposed directly in a bootable fashion.

Options exist, but are time consuming and potentially complicated.

You could for example install Oracle Virtualbox or similar on your desktop.

Then you could use something like clonezilla/drbl with pxe boot on a VM.

So you connect your laptop to the your home network, and use F12 or etc to network (pxe) boot your laptop from a clonezilla/drbl VM. Then restore the image to another VM on your destkop. Then shutdown the drbl VM.

You could do that every day.

Probably too time consuming.

You could do it once, then rsync the files between the VM and the laptop daily.

Depending on the changes you make, you might be able to setup a VM with a git server. Then use git to sync the files.

This would definitely share the CPU and memory resources, but only a partial GPU benefit gain would occur.