unified remote is great, I've been using Linux mint for a while and kde connect serves me well too for similar purposes. I basically have the setup you describe, an old inherited shitty laptop with mint and it's just the stationary media center that I pirate everything with. Not exactly related but I used to use Pushbullet a lot too, there are some redundant overlaps with these apps.

oh and edit I discovered kde connect because my cheap Bluetooth keyboard shit the bed one day lol, and I use a USB Xbox controller I found in a free pile as the mouse, I even custom assigned one button to put my admin password for the terminal with antimicro. yarr