Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Synergy - Open Source program similar to KVM switch

Ok, so maybe not exactly like a KVM switch, but good enough for me! So here's the situation, I have a laptop which I take to work and uni, it's sitting next to my dual 19" LCD monitors connected to my main computer. My laptop is VPN'ed into work, so I can keep an eye on emails while I do some uni work on my main PC. I get an email which requires my attention, so then I have to move all the way over to the laptop, and use it's keyboard and mouse. A pain, but I don't want to fork out for a switch to swap control over. I need to no longer! Thanks to a great open source program, Synergy. Install it on both computers (even works across platforms!), and set one up with two 'screens', named using the computer names, and then set up 2 links (one to go from your main computer to laptop, and then visa versa) Then fire it up on your laptop, tell it the hostname to connect to (this didn't work for me - but IP address did) and away you go. Very cool, and saved me alot of time!

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