Ok, so I am sure that many in my industry may already know about Synergy since it’s been in development for many years but I just learned about it yesterday.
Synergy is a service that runs on a PC, Linux or a Mac and allows you to use one keyboard and mouse to literally jump screens between any of the systems. You can even copy/paste text between them all. And it does all this without the need for a KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switch, which can be kind of expensive.
I am currently running 4 LCDs on 2 systems. I am using my XP box as the server and to the left of it I have a HTPC (Home Theater PC) running Windows Media Center 2005 (XP version until Win7 officially comes out). I’ve always had to have 2 keyboards and 2 mice hooked up in order to run them both because I refused to buy a KVM switch.
No more!
I can now use my primary Windows Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse and just go from one set of screens to the next. The HTPC does *not* need to screens so in the next few days I’ll be taking my Linux box (Ubuntu) and adding it into the mix on the 4th LCD and I’ll then be able to traverse over 4 screens and 3 operating systems without having to use more hardware than is absolutely necessary!
UPDATE: Adding Ubuntu to the mix was actually fairly easy. Once I got the app installed it was just a matter of creating a session that auto starts it when the OS boots up and wallah, 4 screens, 3 OS and 1 Keyboard and Mouse.
