A few years ago I stopped thinking in terms of desktops. This was around the time that I settled into system administration and web development for multiple groups at a time. I set up my Linux desktop and began to really develop good command-line skills. I also made the effort to learn Vim.
A few years on and I really don't think about my computer, but rather a network of computers. It is not uncommon for me to be logged into four different systems at a time, running different things on each. If I need more processing power, I log into one of the beefier systems and start a job. If I'm just editing email it's local, but if I'm editing web files, it's probably on a server hosting my dev instance so my changes are live. I just do each task wherever it is most appropriate.
The real change is that you stop having one entry point to your "computer". I can access the same resources from almost any laptop or desktop. I keep desktops with large dual monitors at work and at home and rarely worry about synchronizing them because the work is actually being done in the same place.
It really is liberating to build your own set of cloud resources and realize that your desktop is just another resource at your disposal in your network.
I do the majority of development locally and I find it works out just fine. I have ssh open to my machine and have a bunch of git repos offloaded to a server somewhere so I can work from practically anywhere, too. You don't have to have a network of four-five computers to work this way. :)
This is the setup I aspire to one day have. I've spent the better part of the past 6 months getting very comfortable with the command line and editing within the shell via emacs - now if only I could convince work to make the server I run all my analysis on be accessible from my home...
A few years on and I really don't think about my computer, but rather a network of computers. It is not uncommon for me to be logged into four different systems at a time, running different things on each. If I need more processing power, I log into one of the beefier systems and start a job. If I'm just editing email it's local, but if I'm editing web files, it's probably on a server hosting my dev instance so my changes are live. I just do each task wherever it is most appropriate.
The real change is that you stop having one entry point to your "computer". I can access the same resources from almost any laptop or desktop. I keep desktops with large dual monitors at work and at home and rarely worry about synchronizing them because the work is actually being done in the same place.
It really is liberating to build your own set of cloud resources and realize that your desktop is just another resource at your disposal in your network.