VNC server on Linux and VNC client on Windows XP

At my work place, I have (quite) an old desktop PC, running Microsoft Windows XP. I have to run Windows because some parts of the IT environment of the company I work for do not support Linux. But, for software development, I prefer (or have to) use Linux. So, I decided to run Linux "inside" Windows, using VirtualBox. This works perfectly, apart from the fact that development tools I use run very slowly. The explanation is simple: my desktop PC does not have enough memory...

I also own a recent laptop PC, more powerful than my desktop PC. I installed Linux (Mint 14) on it, an SSH server and a VNC server (vnc4server, to be precise). 

On the laptop, the ~/.vnc/xstartup file contains:

#!/bin/sh

unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
x-terminal-emulator -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
mate-session &

The above file is for Linux Mint 14, based on Ubuntu 12.10.

For Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial), it is:

#!/bin/sh
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
startxfce4 &

On the Windows PC, I installed PuTTY, and created a session to connect to the laptop PC. And installed RealVNC client, as well.

Then, using this session, I log in to Linux, and run the command vncserver -geometry 1920x1080 (1920x1080 being the dimensions of my desktop display). In Windows, I start the VNC client, and use it to connect to the VNC server. That's it, I've got access to powerful Linux resources from my old desktop PC...

To stop the server, if I have to: vncserver -kill :n (n being the id previously returned by vncserver).