My main work device is a Samsung Galaxy Tab. From it I run a mail server, a task app, an automation server and the website you’re reading. Efficient or unhinged, still deciding.
Why a tablet
Mostly portability. It goes everywhere, it’s fast, and it’s always ready. I also use the pen constantly, for notes, sketches and thinking out loud on a page. I don’t game much beyond chess, so I’ve never needed a big machine for anything else.
For long sessions I plug in a keyboard and mouse. At that point it’s a very light laptop that also happens to be a notebook. I don’t miss my actual laptop at all.
The idea
The tablet doesn’t run anything important. It’s a window. The real work happens on an Oracle Cloud server with far more power than a tablet will ever have. All the tablet has to do is connect reliably and not lose my work when the WiFi has a moment.
Three tools make that happen.
Tailscale: a private network for my devices
Normally, reaching a server from anywhere means opening doors to the whole internet and hoping only you walk through them. Tailscale is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) that puts all my devices on their own private network instead. Tablet, laptop and server can see each other as if they were in the same room, and nobody else can see them at all.
It also means I can reach my laptop from the tablet when I need something that only lives there.
Termius: the terminal
Termius is an SSH (Secure Shell) app. SSH is how you type commands into a server that’s somewhere else. Termius stores my keys and server details, so connecting is one tap instead of me typing an IP address from memory and getting it wrong.
The feature I use most is Snippets: saved commands that run with a tap. I have one that reconnects me to my working session and shows the server’s stats at the same time. It sounds small. It’s the reason I actually use this setup every day instead of just thinking it’s clever.
tmux: sessions that survive
Tablets go to sleep. WiFi drops. Apps get closed in the background because the tablet decided it needed the memory for something more important, like the calculator.
tmux keeps my session running on the server regardless. When I reconnect, everything is exactly where I left it, including anything that was halfway through running.
The bit that went wrong
I installed Claude Code on the server and opened it inside tmux. “Command not found.”
It was installed. I could see it. The problem was that my tmux session had started before the install, so it was still working from the old settings and had no idea the new program existed. One source ~/.bashrc later, everything worked. I spent longer being confused than fixing it, which is how most of these stories go.
Previewing websites
When I’m building a site on the server, I need to see it. Termius can forward a port, which means the site running on the server shows up in the tablet’s browser as if it were running on the tablet itself. No deploying, no public links, just a preview.
Is it worth it?
For me, completely. Everything heavy lives on a server that doesn’t care what I’m holding, and what I’m holding fits in a bag, takes notes, and beats me at chess when I let it.