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"Throw away" base OS and implications?

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mapleLC:
I'm looking to setup a retirement work environment which includes an EE lab, software engineering lab, home office, and personal.

One of my software engineering explorations is setting up a distributed computer system that runs and hosts, well my life, basically.

A major problem, even graduate it to a social problem, is data whore who cares I'm not hiding anything data whore mentality.  They lulled the proles into believing since they weren't hiding anything, there was no reason not to let them invade privacy to astonishing levels.

So, being averse to this kind of whoring of my alter-ego, I decided to distribute everything internally, at home.  No more skyping eachother at home at our desks, we have hosted IM now.  This kind of thing.

This is a lot of preface, sorry.  Anyway, with this type of "hosted internally distribution" in mind, all of the utility of my desktop computer is gone.  I just need a clipboard to bounce around the different applications I use.  So a browser will do a lot of the lifting, but then I need a way to remote into virtualized environments.  There is nothing I can think of my desktop needing to do other than browse and remote desktop, then have settings to maintain itself.

So here is the question, coupled with a thought experiment:

Has anyone every heard of an OS like I'm describing and if not, what is the closest approximation you can think of?

In terms of a thought experiment, help me take this topic of internal distribution of applications to its logical end, which helps flush out architectural considerations for me early and may perhaps trigger others to consider similar ideas. Next post will have a basic outline of network infrastructure to push that along.

mapleLC:
Network infrastructure:

WAN > DMZ > Router 1 and 2 > Router 1 LAN < Router 2 VPN-LAN

SAN storage

Proxmox cluster for hosting OS and apps:


* 3 Windows desktops virtualized and repurposed as proxmox node 1, 2 and 3
* Hosted VMs for various OS - base Ubuntu desktop, Mac OS ventura, etc
* Docker
* BookStack
BookStack was an important first one to get in there, so there I can accumulate all the notes and install info, otherwise its back to browser tabs or bookmarks.  Its fundamental to moving away from a desktop since BookStack replaces a lot of the simple things a desktop would do.  Think of it like this: Windows > my documents ... thats on the SAN now... I can run a document editor from a browser, I dont need local storage, and I can organize the file in my BookStack notebook which I can log into from anywhere (in the world, if I want to port out).

I started by setting up an Ubuntu desktop, installed bookstack.  I started the virtualization process, notated it, then converted 3 desktops into my Proxmox cluster, the boxes are stood up but the cluster is not complete.

That BookStack is now virtualized.  Its kind of a notebook, for lack of a better explanation.

Here is kind of the green field... I can basically setup anything at this point.  What have you done, would like to, or suggest trying?

All the areas are open to tweaks, DMZ, routers, setup, etc.

mapleLC:
I'll keep my research here as a record in the event nobody takes an interest in the topic now, perhaps in the future it might have more meaning.

https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html

This is quite an interesting operating system.  It does not tick many boxes, but for security research its really useful.  It has a lot of simple tools, not the sharpest look and feel but its purpose built.  I am going to test it as a "browser" base, so I am going to isolate my browsing there for a period and see how functional all the normal things I use are. 

shapirus:
What you're describing is known as "thin client". It doesn't even need to have a disk drive (and use network boot instead), so no local storage.

alm:
Exactly. A thin client could either boot from network or from a CF card. The boot medium would be read only (except occasional new image with security updates) and the only persistent storage would be on network servers.

Could be Linux-based, for example https://ltsp.org/docs/installation/#maintaining-a-client-image or https://thinstation.github.io/thinstation/. You can also make them with Windows, but I think you'll either have to create an image yourself from scratch or buy an off the shelf thin client with hardware and software.

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