Cool toys: Synergy
In the last week or so I have been reorganizing my workspace. Or rather, Rosario's workspace, and that meant moving some furniture my way.
One of the things I got is a long desktop, with room for two PCs (it was used in the classroom in Conectiva, and I got it as part of my severance payment).
So, I put my desktop on it, a keyboard and mouse of the tray below, and my home server on the other side of it.
That home server has been headless for a loooong time.
But since I have room in the table, I hooked a monitor, keyboard, mouse set to it, and thought "maybe it will work as a guest machine", for when someone comes to work or stay at my place.
Then I thought, there must be some way to use one keyboard and mouse to drive both machines, and started looking for KVM switches and stuff.
Then I thought... maybe there is a way to do it by software... and yeah! Enter synergy ...
You run a server on the box with the keyboard, and a client on the others. Explain the relationship between them in the simple config file... that's it.
Now I can slide the mouse off a screen to the other computer's, and you even share a clipboard!
Really, really, really nice stuff. Works flawlessly.
And since I am a bit weird in my ways, now... how can I make this work as a xinerama solution, where all the apps are in my notebook, and the other is just a display server?
Right now, I am starting a full screen FreeNX session pointed back at me, so everything is on the same box. But I can't move windows between both monitors.
I think with some creative thinking this can work. X app display migration...
Have you looked into Xorg's DMX? (Distributed Multihead X) I'm sure there are also other options.
Yeah, Synergy is neat. Also works fine between Linux and Windows. :-)
ThomasÑ had never heard of DMX until now ... sounds neat
Just got it going here a few days ago between a linux and windows box.. its fantastic.
Works much better than the DLink hardwar KVM I've been using.
Peter.