How to survive without a laptop — Diego Velasquez
I’ve recently sold my laptop. It was my workstation for Pernix, but because I was not using it due to work from home, It was no longer necessary for me since I now use my desktop computer.
But sometimes a laptop is very necessary. For example, last week there was a problem on ABAKiS staging causing the entire to go down. I was at college and I needed to fix the problem since the QA department was trying to test the recent deploy and Erik wanted to see the new changes.
The error? A missing “end” statement.
I tried to use a desktop computer from my college to clone the project and push it, but since I was not root, I wasn’t able to install Heroku CLI.
Time was running and the page was down. I must have to act quickly.
Then, I remembered a very useful webpage called C9.io. I created my account a long time ago, so I still have premium benefits. This webpage let you create virtual desktops in seconds. You are able to install any Linux package and also you can edit code since it has a collaborative text editor with filesystem included.
I added the missing statement, downloaded Heroku, set up Git and deployed the changes in less than an hour.
Victory.
But then I thought, what if I face a critical error? I will have to set up the environment again and the worst of all, C9.io will become a paid service of AWS only and my current free account will be deleted this year.
The solution?
SSH
Secure Shell let you access a shell remotely from other computer or Linux terminal. This includes files and even programs. There are a lot of guides to setup SSH, here is an example.
Thanks to SSH I’m now able to access my computer from any of my college’s computers or even my Android phone, thanks to a powerful Linux shell for Android called Termux.
Notice that your host computer will need to be on always to be accessible anytime.
Electricity isn’t free and money isn’t unlimited. My computer has a 4 core CPU, a GTX 1660 Ti GPU and 5 RGB fans. Even on idle, this amount of components will require a good amount of energy. How to solve this?
If I could be able to install Heroku and Git on Termux, I would be able to solve this. Unfortunately, I can’t install Heroku on Termux since I need root access and my phone isn’t rooted.
The cheaper solution: a Raspberry Pi. This mini computer consumes just a bit of energy and can be always on. Installing Git, Heroku and SSH, will let me access a copy of any project anytime, anywhere without a laptop. And I will be able to learn more of Linux in this process.
I don’t have a Raspberry now but I will buy it soon and provide a step by step guide of how to set up this mini computer.
