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Currently i am running ubuntu on an notebook for work while i still have a windows desktop pc with a much more powerful cpu and gpu. I need the notebook as a portable working station but i wondered if it would be possible to use the more powerful hardware of the desktop pc while i am at home.

For different reasons i want to avoid installing linux on the desktop pc and though about connecting the internal notebook ssd (with linux on it) to the desktop pc and the boot from that ssd on the desktop pc.

Is it somehow possible to expose the internal notebook ssd externally via, for example, usb or ethernet?

I dont mind any longer startup time. From my understanding ubuntu should be able to load most of the necessary programs/files into the ram once and then have fast access to them.

Edit: To clarify my problem: I want to connect my internal notebook ssd to my desktop pc while the notebook is not running (or, if neccessary, running something to enable me to do this) and then boot from this ssd on my desktop pc.

Basically the same as if i would physically open my notebook and take out the harddrive to connect it to the other pc, just without opening it.

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    It’s not really clear what your end goal is here. Is it that you want to run all the software and OS currently on your laptop, on your desktop? If so, you’re going to have hardware configuration issues trying to move it back and forth. If this is truly what you want to do, you should virtualize the Linux system and store it on an external SSD drive preferably using USB 3. Then replace Linux with Windows and run Hyper-V on both systems so that they can run your Linux virtual machine. Or use VirtualBox on Linux or Windows if that is your preference.
    – Appleoddity
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 14:40
  • I have updated the question. I only need the extra computation power for some specific tasks and using an external harddrive and a virtual machine on my notebook all the time would impact the performance at all times.
    – Vincent
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 16:35
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    That is what @Appleoddity noted, and the advice he gave is salient to the point. Regardless of how you attempt to connect/link/install the SSD from the one computer to the other, the important point is that you're attempting to load the OS on that SSD on a computer that it was not set up on, and you WILL have problems doing this. Because it's Linux it'll be fewer problems than if you were using Windows, but still, problems. Using a VM is the better way, but even then the performance benefits you think you'll be getting will be offset by the nature of what you're trying to do.
    – music2myear
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 17:38
  • In summary, the only actual solution is to install Ubuntu in the machine you want to run it. You can dual-boot if you still need Windows in that PC.
    – user931000
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 17:40
  • I get the advice you are giving me and i appreciate it, however it does not answer my question. You are just saying "it wont work anyway, try this different approach". Furthermore, there are several answers on this site and others claiming that moving a linux installation to another computer usually works fine (e.g. superuser.com/q/383820/995806, unix.stackexchange.com/q/2865). Also note that i don't want to do this with more than one computer and i know both of the architectures. So from my point of view, this question is still open.
    – Vincent
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 18:44

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This is sort-of possible, but probably not worth the effort as you are simply going to cgange one bottleneck for another with added complexity, and eliminating the bottleneck will be way more expensive then upgrading other hardware.

You can share a harddrive or ssd any number of ways, including- at the easy end - SAMBA (Windiws filesharing), then NFS (Unix filesharing) or more powerful and complete but harder, sharing block devices/pseudo block devices using iSCSI.

The issue is that gigabit ethernet will top out at about 125megabytes - about the speed if a hard drive. Likewise, ethernet will add latency (possibly not as much as a fragmented hdd, but a significant amount).

Upgrading past gigabit ethernet is likely more expensive then getting an SSD, and may not be possible.on the laptop. Also, none of this will mske use if the additionsl mrmory ir CPU on the remote.

I do note an alternative for processor heavy but graphics light jobs - use something like rdesktop or VNC to remotely use the more powerful device and turn your slower device intI, in effect, a dumb terminal.

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The problem is that the hard drive is not exposed directly in a bootable fashion.

Options exist, but are time consuming and potentially complicated.

You could for example install Oracle Virtualbox or similar on your desktop.

Then you could use something like clonezilla/drbl with pxe boot on a VM.

So you connect your laptop to the your home network, and use F12 or etc to network (pxe) boot your laptop from a clonezilla/drbl VM. Then restore the image to another VM on your destkop. Then shutdown the drbl VM.

You could do that every day.

Probably too time consuming.

You could do it once, then rsync the files between the VM and the laptop daily.

Depending on the changes you make, you might be able to setup a VM with a git server. Then use git to sync the files.

This would definitely share the CPU and memory resources, but only a partial GPU benefit gain would occur.

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