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synergy – share mouse and keyboard

Quoting the project homepage:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

It really rocks, especially as it works for Linux/Unix as well as for Windows and Mac OS. The setup is simple: just run ‘aptitude install synergy‘ on your Debian system(s) or grab the sources/binaries for the other platforms. Assuming you want one screen named meilenschwein on the left, and another client named funkenzutzler on the right:

mika@funkenzutzler ~ % cat .synergy.conf
# synergy configuration file
section: screens
   funkenzutzler:
   meilenschwein:
end

section: links
   funkenzutzler:
      left = meilenschwein
   meilenschwein:
      right = funkenzutzler
end

Now start synergy on the “server” running “synergys -f –config ~/.synergy.conf” and start it on the client using “synergy -f $SERVER”. That’s it. Make sure to check out the security page.

2 Responses to “synergy – share mouse and keyboard”

  1. Ralph Says:

    LOL! Meilenschwein rocks!

  2. davrieb Says:

    Good tip! I also have synergy in near daily use and am quite content with it.

    One of the problems it still has is that it won’t work properly with the newest version of libX11 from Debian experimental. There are also a few others which share this regression. One of the biggest blockers is sun’s java implementation.

    So beware when mixing synergy and Debian experimental. I have to see if there is yet a bugreport against synergy about that.