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I recently removed ubuntu from my laptop and installed Windows 7 because Microsoft's DreamSpark program gave me Visual Studio Pro for free and I want to do some C# programming with it.

The problem is that my laptop's screen is small, it's resources are extremely limited, and it doesn't have a full sized keyboard. However, I do have a desktop that is my primary system, and it's got a quadcore and tons of RAM in it, and dual monitors.

My question is this, is there a way I can use a program from my laptop, on my desktop, and share my desktops CPU and RAM with the laptop? Everything is connected through a 100 MB/s switch.

One caveat, my desktop is running ubuntu.

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You can use a program like Synergy+ to use your desktop's keyboard and mouse to control your laptop. Synergy works over the network and makes transitioning from one system to the other seamless.

However, programs run on the laptop still run on the laptop's hardware. There isn't a way for your desktop to "loan" CPU and RAM to your laptop. You can setup network shares to allow the laptop to work on the desktop's files, or the desktop to work on the laptop's files, but a program started on one machine will not use any CPU or RAM from the other machine.

If your laptop is that limited, look into running a Windows 7 virtualmachine on your desktop, with software like VirtualBox or VMware or similar.

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Like the Virtual Box option. You could also set it to dual boot if you liked. – Joe Taylor Apr 13 '10 at 15:37
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