For a while now I have been working on a desk with at least 2 computers (most of the time more). Each computer runs a different OS. (Linux / OSX / Windows) While over the past few years I have upgraded my desk a few times, going from the door on saw horses to the long tables you get at Samsclub really cheap to a really nice desk, still a table top, but a bit nicer looking. I’ve always preferred these type of desks because of what they can hold – monitors! I learned a while back that having a keyboard on my desktop for each machine was a lot of clutter. Enter an app I’ve grown to love over the past few years. Synergy. It’s over due worthy for a post. Synergy allows me to take a number of computers and use 1 keyboard/mouse combo for them.
Basically the setup is easy:
Say I have 2 computers at my desk. My work Mac Book Pro and my beloved linux box (in this case it’s running Ubuntu) I really like my Apple hardware, the famous flat keyboard and the mighty mouse and I use my Mac Book Pro a majority of the time. So I pick my MPB to be my “server” for synergy. My linux box will be the client machine. I setup the server with a quick configuration:
mbprover-2:synergy-1.3.1 jhigley$ cat synergy.conf
section: screens
mbprover-2.local:
jamesh-desktop:
end
section: links
mbprover-2.local:
right = jamesh-desktop
jamesh-desktop:
left = mbprover-2.local
end
Now I run synergys (the server) on the MPB and on the linux box I run the client, you guessed it, I run synergyc and tell it to connect to the server. There are a few tricks, be sure to use the “hostnames” of each box in the config. You can customize the config all you want, I just wanted to show you how to get it up quick.
Visit the synergy website for more info: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Price: Free!! (this is why opensource software is so cool.)
