Well, I’m used to virtualization technology, remote desktop management and all this kind of stuff, but Synergy is something that amazes me. And in these days, find something that impresses me, is quite unusual 🙂
If you are familiar with the dual monitor concept, you know the level of productivity you can reach with this setup: a bigger desktop means more applications opened at the same time, no time lost searching into your task switcher and so on…
Synergy is a little client/server application, cross platform and open source. The goal of this piece of code is to share one keyboard and one mouse between multiple machines (Macs, Windows, Linux/Unix) via TCP/IP.
With this fantastic application, you can experience the benefit of a multi-monitor setup with multiple OS. No more useless mess on your desk, only one keyboard and one mouse (and no more expensive and “stupid” KVM switches)
Synergy shares also your clipboard and this is a great plus.
The installer on Windows contain the client, the server and the GUI. You have to fight with the OSX and the Linux/Unix version because the lack of GUI (not really a big battle, it’s only two binaries, one for the the server the other for the client – the usual command line stuff…).
BUT, if you want the GUI and you are not under Windows, you can use Quicksynergy for Linux and OSX (if you have Tiger) or SynergyKM for OSX (works under Leopard).
Note: the OSX versions of Quicksynergy and SynergyKM contains the whole application (client, server and GUI).
The setup on all systems is really simple and intuitive: you have to start the program first on the “server” then connect with the “client(s)”.
Following some screen shots:
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