Back to the Desktop?

I’m sitting here watching a guy describe his usual workflow on his computer. He was talking about Mint Cinnamon and KDE Plasma and he went to show his desktops and I started thinking… how will I do that when I don’t have a touchpad? Everything I do has been shifted to laptop work. I always have my pointer device right there ‘at my fingertips’ and it’s more than just a pointer device. It’s also a scroller and a desktop switcher. I’m almost thinking I’ll want a touch pad for the desktop when that day does come.

Although I can really see me not being at the computer when that day does come. I’ll probably setup moonlight+sunshine and just use it with a ‘dumb terminal’ on my lap. That way I can have the power of the desktop AND the portability of the laptop. Although I don’t know how mouse gestures go through whichever is the client… Some research needs done I see. I can always setup Plasma on the second laptop and setup the pair… maybe I’ll do just that.

I like the current setup on my nvidia rig though, it’s currently running Omarchy and offers the perfect view for what I use that thing for. Some light gaming, encoding and browsing. The only reason it games is because I like to be able to play games with the kid when we’re out and about so his account is logged into steam. I do play some geometry dash when long encodes are taking place though so it’s not all him.

I think I found my desk, the UTESPELARE from Ikea should fit the bill perfectly. Adjustable height so I can dial that in as I might try a low setting at first and put monitors on risers. I found a nice power strip that connects to the desk and offers up some usb and usb-c ports for charging devices. That’ll come in handy for charging the power brick we use to charge our phones. And I’m locating a suitable desk lamp. I’ve got a couple candidates but I’m trying to get rid of the ones with power connectors as it’ll be plugged into a power strip so I don’t need to daisy chain strips or anything weird like that.

I’ll setup my space before getting a new desktop. I just purchased a laptop so I’ll keep that thing as my primary driver for the time being until I can justify the cost of another device.

The first thing I’ll get once getting back into a home office will be a mini cluster. Some raspberry pi 4’s with several gigs of memory should be fun to play with. Looking forward to having my office back.