Synergy - Oh Hell Yeah!
I may have discovered the greatest piece of open-source software of all time yesterday. And best of all, similar programs run around 50$.
It’s called Synergy. It’s a sofware program that runs in the background of your Windows, Macintosh, Unix, or Linux machine. What it does is allows you to use one keyboard and one mouse for multiple computers. It is exactly like using a computer with multiple displays, but you have different machines. I’ve set it up at home to run on my Linux and Windows box. Yes, you can go cross platform! I plan on adding my laptop to my setup in the next couple days.
The setup I saw came from Lifehacker’s workspace contest. The guy had four monitors all next to eachother. The middle two were his Ubuntu box, the left was hit Mac Mini, and the right was running Win XP. I’ve seen other setups that included 12 displays. Your displays don’t even have to be next to each other, you can also put them above or below.
Setup was pretty easy. For Windows and I assume Mac, it’s really really simple. Ubuntu was simple too, until I realized I couldn’t log in to the machine because the service wasn’t yet running. I looked around some forums and found some instructions on editing some system files to allow the keyboard sharing before logging in. It wasn’t difficult, even for a Linux noob like myself.
Basically, if you have multiple computers on one desk, Synergy is an absolute must!