Friday, April 20, 2012

Monitors, keyboards, and mice oh my!

I finally did it! I installed Synergy so that I could use my multiple computers, monitors, keyboards, and mice with only one keyboard and one mouse. In other words, alleviating the need for the multiple keyboards and mice I had laying around my desk.

You are probably thinking "You could have just used a KVM switch you idiot!" You would probably be right! However, I considered this a few times in the past but the problem I ran into is that:
  1. I have multiple monitors
  2. I use multiple computers at the same time
  3. I sometimes like to see one set of applications or widgets while working in another resource intensive application
So, in the end, it seemed that a standard KVM wasn't suited to the task. I did a bit of research a while back, looking for the perfect KVM, but never came to any conclusion as I also did not want to spend a whole lot of money on a solution that would only partially work.

In the end, I owe this all to the good folks over at the Linux Action Show as Synergy was the universal app pick on their Mysterious Blue Systems | LAS | s21e05 episode.

I installed the app today on all the systems on my desk and it has been working beautifully! The only issue that I have run into so far is trying to get used to using a single keyboard and mouse!

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