One mouse, many computers
I’ve been reorganising my desktop (the physical one, not the virtual one) recently.
I now have a tidy desk, complete control over two computers and four screens, and have a VNC connection to a headless Raspberry Pi as well – it’s a really cohesive experience 🙂
I now have a tidy desk, complete control over two computers and four screens, and have a VNC connection to a headless Raspberry Pi as well – it’s a really cohesive experience 🙂
So I’ve not got a MacMini (main workhorse) with dual video outputs to two screens, and my Linux test server (called “The Borg” because it’s in a clear ATX case with lots of internal lighting) which is also running two screens.
But this meant two keyboards, and two mice. And I was constantly picking up the wrong mouse/keyboard.
For the MacMini I use an Apple Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and wanted to use this for both computers. I do have a 4-port KVM switch, but that would just add more clutter to the desk. So I decided to look into software to run multiple computers from one mouse and keyboard.
After testing a number of solutions, I settle on Synergy, available at: http://synergy-project.org/
I can’t recommend this highly enough.
I did take a bit of work to configure correctly, but now I move my mouse to any of the four screens (two Mac and two Linux) and type right there – just awesome!
One of the reason I chose Synergy is that it has clients for Mac, Linux, and Windows. Although I don’t use anything Windows I’m sure many of you do. There are even builds specifically for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Red Hat.
I now have a tidy desk, complete control over two computers and four screens, and have a VNC connection to a headless Raspberry Pi as well – it’s a really cohesive experience 🙂
- H5P periodic table – 8th September 2023
- Moodle 4.0 – 15th May 2022
- Moodle 4.0 other highlights – 14th May 2022
This sounds very cool 🙂