Monday, April 10, 2006

Synergy: Open-Source Keyboard/Mouse Sharing

Synergy rocks! It lets you seamlessly use your keyboard and mouse with several computers. Yup you can drag your mouse from your PC to your Mac - amazing! Or if you have three old computers, hello triple monitor setup!

I connected my desktop and laptop together as follows:

* Downloaded Synergy to both computers
* Ran Synergy in client-mode on the laptop
* Ran Synergy in server-mode on the desktop. Note that I had to add the host names of both computers ("euler" and "gateway" in my case) as "screens", then I added two rules: "0 to 100% of the right of gateway goes to 0 to 100% of euler" and "0 to 100% of the left of euler goes to 0 to 100% of gateway"

That last step took some figuring out, but I've done it so you don't have to!
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14 comments:

  1. Mitzi Hernández4/11/2006 8:07 p.m.

    Es increible lo que haces, guaaaauhh! espero que pronto tenga en mis manos algúno de los programas que tan bien dices diseñar.

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  2. Jonathan4/11/2006 11:26 p.m.

    Hi mit - glad you like my freeware recommendations!!

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  3. Jonathan4/11/2006 11:27 p.m.

    Hi Bert - Awesome you got it figured out! Yay!

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  4. Anonymous4/12/2006 5:58 a.m.

    If you share a keyboard and mouse between computers can't you get a S.T.D. or something?

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  5. Sarah Letnes4/12/2006 3:30 p.m.

    That's the perfect solution to all of my husband's multiple computer woes. And it's my favorite: freeware.

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  6. Jonathan4/12/2006 10:49 p.m.

    Computer Nerds Unite - Hmmm!

    ¡fuerza - gracias! ¡Estoy alegre que usted tiene gusto de él!

    Sarah - awesome! Hope he enjoys it!

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  7. Jonathan4/16/2006 1:01 p.m.

    Hannah - Good to see technology is alive and well in Williams Lake!

    Sean - Yeah, synergy is awesome. Need to buy a couple of old computers so I can have more displays!

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  8. Etznab 64/17/2006 8:25 a.m.

    ¡Sorprendente!
    No lo había visto de esa manera.

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  9. Jonathan4/17/2006 9:05 a.m.

    etznab 6 - glad you find it intriguing!

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  10. wendell penedo4/19/2006 3:27 p.m.

    Thats fantastic!

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  11. Jonathan4/19/2006 7:26 p.m.

    Hi Wendell - yup, amazing it's free!

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  12. Jon & Julie4/20/2006 6:17 a.m.

    Thanks for the post on Synergy. I have been intereted in finding something like this for a while for efficiencies and this thing works great. We used it in the office to prank a team mate. We loaded the client when he was a away and then kept taking control without him understanding why. "Hey, what the hell?!?!?"

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  13. Jonathan4/20/2006 7:35 p.m.

    haha - awesome!

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  14. Anonymous6/22/2008 7:05 p.m.

    Good tips... I did a full review of Synergy over on my blog:

    http://www.fritzthetechdog.com/blog/?p=45

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