For any Android devs out there. I built a linux beast workstation just for running Android Studio/Gradle et al. Then used NoMachine to headless into it. Kept my 2013 MBP and got a 4-5x improvement in build/deploy cycles without leaving OSX completely behind. Highly recommended.
You wouldn't happen to know where to get a decent NoMachine 3 replacement would you? I'm completely sold on the compressed/cached X forwarding that 3 offered, even if the server can only be an X11/*nix based machine. It was so fast it beat my school's on-LAN citrix server when I was remoting home through my house's DSL! I'm sad they abandoned it for more server compatibility in 4 and won't provide old 3 downloads that I could find...
NoMachine, in the Workstation version uses the exact X protocol compression of the version 3, even improved, with the same brilliant performance. Anyway the Workstation is a commercial product, so I understand some may dislike it or prefer completely “free” stuff.
X2Go is a remote access program which is based on nx3. It worked pretty well when I was messing with it. I've never been on to do a lot of day-to-day work on rdp/vnc/nx but if I wanted to using an x11 system, it would be my choice.
I actually might do the same thing, just not with OS X, but instead using Linux as a desktop OS and a virtual Windows for specific stuff that Linux doesn't do, can't remember off the top of my head right now. I'd like to build a beefy server and put a few VMs on it for my family and have them use linux PCs as dumb thin clients and use the VMs, so I can roll-back changes and keep it always fresh, and of course benefit from a fast CPU.
