You mean there are people daily-driving KVM as a remote desktop solution? That seems like it would be remarkably painful; https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/08/20-nanokvm-is-a-tiny... says 100-160 ms latency, and I'm assuming that's over local network rather than trying to remote to it.

What would you recommend for that use case? Just remote into an always on desktop?

Depends on exactly which usecase:

* Evading corporate IT: I do not recommend doing this.

* Normal[0] remote access to a machine: Yeah, running a remote desktop in software on the machine[1] is almost always going to be easier, cheaper, more performant, and more flexible than anything you tack on externally.

[0] Where "normal" remote access means it doesn't need to work when the machine is kernel panicked or in the firmware setup screens.

[1] The machine itself can be whatever you want. It can be an always-on desktop, but it can also be a laptop that sits in the corner and that only boots up when you poke it with a Wake-on-LAN packet, or a VM on an ESXi cluster, or a (carefully secured) Hetzner Cloud VM. That part is dealer's choice depending on your needs.