[Klug-general] openssh or what?

[Michael E. Rentell]

I have recently contracted something nasty which prevents my sitting 
comfortably at my primary PC. I have to use a limited-spec laptop over 
the domestic wi-fi network for emailing etc and staying in touch. My 
domestic network consists of two well-specced PCs called 'mainframe' and 
'backup' connected together via an Ethernet cable, plus 'laptop' 
connected via the wi-fi facility on the router. 'Backup' has shared 
files via samba etc so that the entire content of 'mainframe' can be 
dumped to it. 'Laptop' can also see those shared backup files. That 
seems to work.

What I want to do now is use 'mainframe' with its extended facilities, 
including VirtualBox, but from 'laptop'. I am pretty sure this is 
possible under Linux. 'Mainframe' has the latest Ubuntu with Unity, 
'backup' has up-to-date PCLinuxOS and 'laptop' is running LXDE although 
I'm not sure whose. Currently the only shared facility is cups which 
works fine using 'mainframe' as the printer server. That more or less 
installed itself.

Can someone kindly point me at an idiots guide where I can read up on 
how to achieve what I want to do. I've read the wikipedia article on 
openssh and that seems to be the way to go although do I need all that 
encryption when I am sheltered behind a router which is a pretty good 
firewall? There are no problems with internal security as I'm the only 
user in the house and the wi-fi link is encrypted with WPA-PSK.

It would be nice to sit here in my armchair with my laptop just feeding 
the keyboard and mouse clicks to 'mainframe' and seeing that PC's screen 
on my laptop. I'm happy to do a lot of reading but I don't want to 
re-invent the wheel neither do I want to over-complicate things with 
lots of encryption if that isn't necessary.

Er when I said 'idiots guide' I meant it :-[ . Many thanks in advice.

MikeR