I have a very unorthodox work environment. Actually, it is even more so at home. I use multiple computers to do my job. I really don’t have a choice. As a development team lead for an enterprise scaled eCommerce application, I find myself living in multiple worlds regularly. My work setup consists of 3 machines. I use a 3Ghz Dell Optiplex P4 with a dual monitor setup for my day to day machine for email, our change management application, Office Communicator, Web Browsing, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. I have an identical (except half the ram at 1GB) Dell that I run Fedora Core 6 Linux on that is used for working with our vast array of Linux Servers as well as testing applications and coding against the Java Struts based system with Eclipse.
Until a few weeks ago, I was the king mouse and keyboard juggler. When I added in my work laptop for meeting and note taking, etc, things just truly went out of control.
Synergy
Recently I started using Synergy to detangle my madness at work. Now I use it at home, and so does Dawn religiously. Now we have invaded the local Microsoft dev camp and my fellow co-workers are all convinced too.
Synergy is a client server application that allows you to control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse simultaneously. Every time I try to explain this to someone I get the same response, “Isn’t that what a switch does?” The answer is no and hell no! It’s so much more. I will try and diagram my setup below so you can try to understand the difference.
If you notice the arrows on the diagram above (click the image to enlarge) you will see that I am not switching monitors. I maintain viewable display at all times on all machines. The Dual Head XP Machine behaves like a traditional dual head setup, when I slide my mouse cursor off of the right monitor, it moves perfectly onto the left and I can control the windows machine on both monitors, no big deal. The magic occurs when slide the cursor off of the left side of the left Windows XP monitor, the Synergy client captures my mouse and keyboard and it assumes control of the Linux machine. Total control, even the clipboard from the Windows machine is available on the Linux machine. That’s right, you can copy and paste between two different computers. Now I have the laptop mapped to the bottom of the Linux machine, so when I move the cursor off the bottom of the Linux machine, it takes control of the laptop. I can use all three computers without once changing a keyboard/mouse OR switching a switch box manually or via macro. It’s seamless.
I highly recommend using the Windows machine for the server in this setup as it is much easier to configure via the GUI interface than the Linux text file editing method.
This application supports Linux, Windows and MacOSX so it’s a great solution for those of you who use multiple computers simultaneously.
I did have a bit of trouble configuring with hostnames (the default) so I recommend using static IP’s and configuring it via IP instead.
Synergy can be downloaded at http://synergy2.sourceforge.net
JB
I have a similar writeup for a linux based network (ubuntu). The text file config is pretty simple and I’ve got a few examples. Configure synergy in Ubuntu
Synergy really is great. I can’t live without it anymore.
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